Fidelia

“ He was light-minded and happy. He thought that his shore self would hardly know this Dave Herrick who walked the floe with Fidelia Netley. The boy, who had played with her in the ice caves, would know him; this David Herrick was that boy who now knew Fidelia much better. They had talked together a thousand things; and with each, Fidelia had more delighted him.
She said nothing profound; that was it! She never even tried to; the idea of being profound could not occur to her. She thought and said wholly natural, agreeable things, not like any one else. ”

“ Here was the place where the students lived, Fidelia recognized—ten or twenty girls together in one house and as many men rooming in the next.
They would prove to have come from everywhere and they would be no ordinary people; for each lighted window here must represent a separate and definite will and ambition of some one—at least of a parent or a brother or sister or friend for each some one up there on the other side of every window blind; each glow suggested a self-denial, a sacrifice and a determination of the various sorts with which Fidelia had become familiar. ”

“ There had been a mistake years ago about Bolton, who had had no such life as Fidelia, yet who was alive when people said he was dead. There was a mistake; and when David drove to the door and came up from the car with a child of four years in his arms, Alice knew the mistake for what it was. Fidelia lived but she was a child again.
She had clear, white skin and dark, red hair and large brown eyes and red lips and a lovely, provoking nose like Fidelia's; and, her arm about David's neck, she clung as only a child of Fidelia's could. She was vivid and warm and she loved life. ”

“ How could Myra feel so sure that Fidelia "was finished" for Alice?
Fidelia's secret had proved to be as serious as Myra could have suspected; and it was true that Fidelia was gone away to be the wife of another man. But she was not "finished" for Alice; and would she ever be?
Myra seemed to imagine that David and Alice could, if they would, ignore his three and a half years with Fidelia; she seemed to fancy that Fidelia had not changed him and her and that they had power to put themselves back where they were before Fidelia came to college on that snowy, winter night. ”

“ Alice did not let herself imagine that Fidelia had left him of her own free will and at her own choice; far less did Alice dream that Fidelia had departed to go to another man. No; Alice had to allow her first exultation to be complete, so she imagined Fidelia going away because she had found that she had come to her end with David; and Alice had to allow herself to believe that she had much to do with this. ”

“ Upon the furniture, upon the curtains, upon the carpet, everywhere one looked closely were proofs of repeated repair and care for cheap, outworn things.
Fidelia's eyes filled. She put down her packages and one of her hands sought David's. As he felt her clasp, he hardened his hand within hers to oppose her pity for his people.
"They don't care whether they have things or not," he whispered almost fiercely in his pride. ”

“ Naturally she did this; she had taught him to dance; and this unconscious reminder of their first days together used to stir tenderness. Now he thought of Fidelia, warm, all alive but following, docile to him.
Alice tried to talk. She said: "Don't you like the music?" He replied: "It's great." ”

“ A sorority girl at the other end of the table smiled at nothing at all unless it was at this protestation of Fidelia's serious purpose at college; Miss Lacey also seemed to find something amusing; and Fidelia felt Dorothy's fingers clasping her own more tightly. She began to realize that the girls, who most obviously did not like her, were all wearers of society pins and that her friends were among the other girls. ”

“ Defiantly Dave thrust an arm about Alice and pressed her close to him as he drove. Gone from her, also, was any fear, or any thought, of Fidelia Netley. She was happy. Not wholly happy; she never could be completely happy until David and she owned each other without right of any one to forbid them love. ”

“ Alice did not take them. Whether or not she should touch Fidelia's offered hand, Alice hardly considered; for she could not. The old seizure of her helplessness before Fidelia—that helplessness which started with her fear when she first saw Fidelia on the evening of her arrival in Myra's room, which was doubled on the first morning in class when she saw Fidelia sitting in the sun and which overwhelmed her finally at the Tau Gamma dance—that possessed Alice again. ”

“ Dave couldn't imagine it; her splendid body must always be warm.
It was for Fidelia a night when she felt like going to the point of exhaustion, when she gloried in giving herself to the sensation of spending her strength and feeling how much more she had to spend. She enjoyed this sensation particularly in company; and in David Herrick she found endurance equal to her own.
Her impulse of self-reproach at bringing him here, had passed; he was with her because he wanted to be, instead of being with Alice Sothron in that warm house now lost amid the lights of the distant shore. ”

“ Soon the house was quiet; they were all gone, except Myra who for a time sat in the dark beside her and then lay down on the bed. Myra went to sleep. Alice did not.
Sometimes she imagined Fidelia and David both lost; sometimes she supposed Fidelia lost and David safe; and sometimes Fidelia safe and David had been drowned. But she believed none of this; she believed them both safe and together; and consequently, while she waited, she tried to recast her life; but she could not.
How she depended upon David! Every plan, every purpose, every hope, every dream was hers only with him. ”

“ Fidelia remembered.
"Well, now, Fidelia, do you suppose you can go down to the store and buy some raisins for mother to put in sister Cynthy's weddin'-cake, all yourself?"
"An' be a real smart little girl," put in Aunt Maria.
Fidelia gave one ecstatic roll of her black eyes at them, then she broke into a shout, "Lemme go! lemme go!" She oscillated on her small stubbed toes like a bird preparing to fly, and she tugged energetically at her mother's apron.
"I'll give you a penny, an' you can buy you a nice stick of red-and-white twisted candy," added her mother. ”

“ On Saturday was the dance, the Tau Gamma "formal," which she was to lead with David and where Fidelia would be.
Alice had a new dress for the dance and a new bracelet, a narrow band of gold with sapphires of the blue of her eyes. She had new, silver slippers with new buckles which her father, himself, selected. He had her meet him in town on Saturday morning for a shopping excursion; and she knew perfectly well what he was doing. He was trying, by money, to help her fight Fidelia. ”

“ Fidelia said, "besides what I do."
"Are you ashamed of what you think?"
"It's what I think," she replied and she made her book safe by raising herself slightly and thrusting it under her thigh and resting her leg upon it.
So she lost the pity she had roused in him. He felt himself defied and he said: "Everything must be pleasant and easy for a man and his wife in these days. If God did not ordain that the giving of life be wholly convenient and cause no interruption in pleasure, so much the worse for God or at least for the sacred function of giving life. ”

“ Fidelia asked and she flushed with feeling for the thin mother with warm, gray eyes and sweet smile who always kissed her and liked to call her "daughter." Mother Herrick was not as strong as usual this summer, Deborah had written to David.
Ephraim Herrick, having already answered Fidelia's question, ignored its repetition. He stepped into the room and felt assailed by a personal offense from the gay luxuriousness of this suite of his son. Such living held no proper place in his scheme of things. ”

“ Alice heard from David that he was coming home at noon. Mr. Jessop was here with news that Fidelia had died in England, David had said and had added he had much more to tell her. Fidelia was dead. It was a statement which bore to Alice no reality. It was wholly different from the news which had come that Bolton was dead. Never had he been more than a name and a statement of fact when he lived; it required nothing more than another statement of fact to let you know that he was dead. But Fidelia bore the flower of life itself; to think of Fidelia was to think of color, warmth and stir ”

“ ALICE A DIFFICULT and embarrassing bit of business, in connection with Fidelia Netley, was what detained Alice with Myra up there in Myra's room in Willard, which Nell Gould and Fidelia had just left. And the girls were unable to get to that business quickly; for after Fidelia closed the door on her departure, Alice and Myra gazed at each other in silence for several moments after Miss Netley's definite, clicking tread had diminished down the hallway. Both girls, for the instant, were holding breath; then Myra parted her lips with an audible gasp and laughed. ”

“ She realized: "It's no use; I can't be Fidelia."
She dragged in the dance which become more and more unendurable. They danced near Fidelia who now had Roy Wheen for a partner. He was not a good dancer but Fidelia was doing well with him; he was flushed and excited. "He's happy," Alice thought; and this sight of them seemed to deny Myra's story that Roy Wheen "knew" something about Fidelia and that she was afraid of him and that was why he was here. Nothing in Fidelia's manner suggested the forced or perfunctory with Roy Wheen or hinted at fear. Fidelia seemed to be having a good time, too. ”

“ Alice's mother corrected. "It's love of a sort you meet once or twice in a lifetime. It may be the most wonderful or the most terrible thing in the world; or it's both."
Alice became filled with new fears while she waited, hearing nothing from David. She thought: "Fidelia has come back to him." And while she was in the grip of this idea, she dreaded to pass the hotel or meet people who had been there. Then she learned that David had left the hotel and was living in a bachelors' building; yet the fear that Fidelia would return, remained with her. ”

“ This was a summer when Alice might have remained at home for a number of reasons entirely unconnected with David and Fidelia Herrick but Fidelia never thought of Alice doing anything without having David in mind. Alice was still unmarried and though Fidelia knew that she often went out with men, yet Fidelia knew also that Alice never was seen frequently with the same man. Now and then, in the three years, Fidelia had happened to meet Alice and Fidelia knew that Alice had never given up David. ”

“ Fidelia kept aglow by the slow expending of her strength; she was happy. All other considerations she had put off until morning—all but one.
This was the star which David had pointed out to her in the east—Saturn, the star of her beautiful verse, yet the baleful star, the wandering planet of misfortune.
"That's Saturn?" she asked him, when their song was done.
"Yes."
"You're sure?"
"I know it. Why?"
She did not tell him. It might mean nothing; of course it was nothing; sensible people laughed at such ideas; yet she wished that Saturn was not the star ascendant to-night. ”

“ They shook hands upon meeting and upon parting; they occasionally sat side by side upon the lounge but as a rule they occupied separated chairs while they talked of his mother, of business, of the war, of Lan and Myra and of anything and any one but Fidelia.
Their minds swiftly re-established an intimacy in which Alice could feel no break. When he spoke of his relations with his father and with Mr. Fuller and when he told her of his difficulties with Snelgrove and the agency, it seemed just like long ago. ”

“ I enquired what cause produced the loss of her senses—He looked down sorrowfully—the question awakened the gloomy sensations of past evils, the recollection of which was painful, and opened wounds afresh that were not yet healed. “She has lost her lover,” cried the old man—“the youth was the son of one of our neighbours—their infancy was marked by a peculiar attachment to each other. When the young people danced together, Fidelia was always the partner of Henry—as they grew up their mutual tenderness ripened into passionate affection. ”

“ Alice cried. "I don't want one thing more unusual or talkable about her. He's on her side, as it is. I've got to be on her side, too. Oh, My, don't you see?"
Myra clasped her, kissed her and was conquered; and the next day, Fidelia Netley was formally affiliated with the local chapter of Tau Gamma. ”

“ Miss Lacey, who evidently did not like Fidelia Netley, was a sorority girl; Dorothy Hess and the girl opposite were not. In this house of fourteen girls, besides Fidelia, there were eight who wore on their blouses the pin of one or another of the college sororities; six girls wore no emblem at all. The fourteen had been coming to these same tables three times a day, they had been rooming side by side and exchanging a dozen times a day the little courtesies which Fidelia had overheard that morning ”

“ Fuller doesn't want us to lower our balance yet. He's well satisfied."
Alice asked: "How's your father, David?"
"The same," David answered, shortly.
At last Alice asked: "How is Fidelia?" And when she did it, another part of their plan—Alice's plan and his—was in his mind. It was the part of their plan which hoped that she would bear a child in their first year.
"She's—the same," said David and Alice gazed into his eyes and she left him.
Upon this afternoon, Fidelia was not in when he reached the hotel for he was considerably earlier than usual. ”