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. ”

“ Harriett replied, falteringly—for Ruth's burning eyes never left her sister's face. "You know—really—you're not married. You know he's not divorced, Ruth. He's not your husband. He's Marion Averley's."
"You think so?" Ruth flung back at her. "You really think so, do you, Harriett? After those years together—brought together by love, united by living, by effort, by patience, by courage—I ask you again, Harriett,—if the things there have been between Stuart Williams and me can't make a marriage real—what can?"
"The law is the law," murmured Harriett. "He is married to her. ”

“ This was not something called up in vindication, a mere escape from hard thinking, her own way out from things she could not bear; it was deeper than that, far less facile. It came from that inner quiet—from that strange new assurance—this feeling that her love should not have devastated, that it was too purely of life for that; that it was a thing to build up life, to give to it; this wondering, at once timid and bold, if there was not something wrong with an order that could give it no place, that made it life's enemy.
She had been afraid of rebellious thinking, of questionings. ”

“ But it was releasing sorrowing, the sorrowing that makes one one with the world, drawing one into the whole life of human feeling, the opened heart that brings one closer to all opened hearts. It was the sadness that softens; such sadness as finds its own healing in enriched feeling. It made her feel very near her father and mother; she loved them; she felt that they loved her. She had hurt them—terribly hurt them; but it all seemed beyond that now; they understood; and she was Ruth and they loved her. It was as if the way had been cleared between her and them. ”

“ Those real things were stronger in her than this crust of worldliness. He would reach through that to the life that glowed behind it. If he only had the skill, the understanding, to reach through that crust to the life within, to that which was real, she would understand that the very thing bringing them their happiness was the thing which in Ruth put her apart from her friends; she would be larger, more tender, than those others. He wanted that triumph for her over them. He would glory in it so! There would be such pride in showing Amy to Ruth as a woman who was real. ”

“ Then she met Mildred. It came to her then—right while she was talking with Harriett about what Flora Copeland was going to do now that the house would be broken up—that it was just that thing which kept the world conservative. It was fear for others. It was that feeling she had when she looked down at Mildred's feet.
One did not have that feeling when one looked at one's own feet. Fear of pain for others was quite unlike fear for one's self. Courage for one's self one could gain; in the fires of the heart that courage was forged. ”

“ That feeling which they as individuals knew reached out into common experiences, into a life in common growing out of individual things. Passing these houses, she wanted to share in that life in common. She had been too long by herself. She needed to be one with others. Life, for a time, had a certain terrible beauty that burned in that sense of isolation. But it was not the way. One needed to be one with others.
She thought of how it was love, more than any other thing, that gave these people that common life. Love was the fabric of it. Love made new combinations of people—homes, children. ”

“ 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! ”

“ She put one of them up, still further averting her face, lost to him in the picture forming itself before her of how life would be if love came right; what it would mean not to have to hide, but to have those who cared for her happy in her happiness; what it would mean to give herself to love without fear, to wear her joy proudly before the world, revealing her womanhood. She was not thinking of what life with Deane would be but of what love that could have its place would be: telling her mother and father and Edith, being able to show the pride of being loved, the triumph of loving. ”

“ Love's fear possessed her utterly. He had had the feeling all along that it was rushing on to disaster. He stood back from it now with something like awe: a force not for him to control.
And he, with it from within, was the only one who did not condemn Stuart Williams for letting Ruth go. A man, and older than she, they scorned him for letting an infatuated girl throw her life away like that. And it was not only that he saw that the man was sick and broken; it was that he saw that Stuart, just as Ruth, had gone in love beyond his power to control love, that he was mastered, not master, now. ”

“ He helped her in deceiving her family and friends, aided them in the ugly work of stealing what happiness they could from the society in which they lived. He did not like doing it. Neither did he like attending the agonies of child-birth, or standing impotently at the bed of the dying. It might seem absurd, in trying to explain one's self, to claim for this love the inevitability of the beginning and the end of life, and yet, seeing it as he saw it he did think of it, not as a thing that should or should not be, but as a thing that was; not as life should or should not be lived, but as life. ”

“ She was thinking of her own life, of how it was clouding her happiness.
"One has to admit," said Cora, in the tone of summing it all up, "that just taking one's own happiness is thorough selfishness. Society as a whole is greater than the individual, isn't it?"
That seemed to Amy the heart of it. She felt herself as one within society, herself faithful to it and guarding it against all who would do it harm; hard to the traitor, not because of any personal feeling—she wished to make that clear to herself—but because society as a whole demanded that hardness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Though Deane Franklin's smile for seeing through people was not so much a smile as a queer little twist of the left side of his face, a screwing up of it that half shut one eye and pulled his mouth out of shape, the same twist that used to make people call him a homely youngster. He was thinking that Cora's question, or at any rate her manner in asking it, would itself have told that she had lived away from Freeport for a number of years. She did not know that they did not talk about Ruth Holland any more, that certainly they did not speak of her in the tone of everyday things. ”

“ But doubtless Ted was wrong—not knowing her. It did not seem that Deane would be drawn to anyone who was not real.
She lingered in the thought of him. Real was just what Deane was. He had been wonderfully real with her in those days—days that had made the pattern of her life. Reality had swept away all other things between them. That carried her back to the new thinking, the questions. It seemed it was the things not real that were holding people apart. It was the artificialities people had let living build up around them made those people hard. ”

“ Her instinct was not to let reserves break down, not to show agitation; to protect herself by never leaving commonplace ground. It was terribly hard—this driving back the flood-tide of feeling and giving no sign of the struggle, the resentment. It was as if every nerve had been charged to full life and then left there outraged.
But she could do it; she could appear pleasantly surprised at Mildred's having come to take her for a drive, could talk along about the little things that must be her shield against the big ones. ”

“ With a swift little movement the girl turned a glowing face to the man standing before her. Flushed with dancing, keyed high in the pleasure and triumphs of the evening, she turned the same radiant face to Stuart Williams as he claimed their dance that she would have turned to almost anyone claiming a dance. It was something that came to life in the man's eyes as he looked down into her flushed face, meeting her happy, shining eyes, that arrested the flashing, impersonal smile of an instant before and underneath that impersonal gladness of youth there was a faint flutter of self. ”

“ Ted's antagonism against Cyrus, comforting to her, might work harm to Ted. Those were the things she did. That was what came through her.
The comfort, communion, peace of a few minutes before seemed a mockery. Out of her great longing she had deluded herself. Now she was cast back; now she knew. It was as if she had only been called out in order to be struck back. And it seemed that Ted, whom she had just found again, she must either lose or harm. And the shame of it!—children not coming together under their father's roof when he was dying! Even death could not break the bitterness down. ”

“ Amy was asleep when he came home, or he took it for granted that she was asleep and was careful not to disturb her, for it was past midnight. He wished she would turn to him with a sleepy little smile. He wanted to be made to feel that it was true he was happy, that he was going to be happy always. That night was not filled with the sweetness of love's faith in permanence. He tried to put away the thought of how Amy had looked as she said those things about Ruth. Knowing the real Ruth, his feeling about her freshened, deepened, he could not bear to think of Amy as having said those things. ”

“ Fiercely she turned the other face, told Mildred what love in loneliness meant, what it meant to be shut away from one's own kind, what that hurting of other lives did to one's self, what isolation made of one, what it did to love. Things leaped out that she had never faced, had never admitted for true; the girl to whom she talked was frightened and she was frightened herself—at what she told of what she herself had felt, feeling that she had never admitted she had had. ”

“ After going home she would lie awake for hours, live over every slightest thing he had said, each glance and move. It was an unreal world of a new reality—quickened, heightened, delirious, promising.
In that first year she sometimes wondered if it was what would be called a flirtation. It did not seem so to her, and it was true that after that first night at the Country Club the quality of flirtation somehow fell away. Afterwards, when it became the thing that made her life, she looked back in wonderment to the light little way it had begun. ”

“ That bleak sense of life as going by fell away; here was life—the beautiful life he was to have with Amy. He watched the breeze play with her hair and his whole heart warmed to her in the thought of the happiness she brought him, in his gratitude for what love made of life. He forgot his resentment about Ruth, forgot the old bitterness and old hurt that had just been newly stirred in him. Life had been a lonely thing for a number of years after Ruth went away. ”

“ He did not say anything, miserably wondering what she now thought of him as her friend.
"Oh, Deane," she broke out, "don't be hard! If you could know what he's suffering! Being a man—being a little older—what's that? If you can understand me, Deane, you've got to understand him, too!"
He stood there in silence looking at Ruth as, looking away from him now, she brooded over that. In this hour of her own humiliation her appeal was for the man who had brought it upon her. "How you love him!" ”

“ For the minute he stood there looking at her—so absolutely unyielding, so satisfied in her conclusions,—those same things about society and the individual that he had heard from the rest of them; like the rest of them so satisfied with the law she had laid down—law justifying hardness of heart and closing in against the sorrow of a particular human life; from Amy now that same look, those same words. For a little time he did not speak. "I'm awfully sorry, Amy," was all he said then.
He stood there in miserable embarrassment. He always kissed her good-by. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would be good to have someone to talk to about the things one thinks."
"What are the things you think, Annie?" Ruth asked impulsively.
"Oh, no mighty thoughts," laughed Annie; "but of course I'm always thinking about things. We keep alive by thinking, don't we?"
Ruth gave her a startled look.
"Perhaps it's because I haven't had from life itself much of what I'd like to have," Annie was going on, "that I've made a world within. Can't let life cheat us, Ruth," she said brightly. "If we can't have things in one way—have to get them in another." ”