Ruth

The small reception room in the Farraday cottage had been converted into a temporary sewing room, and here Elizabeth and Peggy were sewing on their own blue dimity frocks, fitted to them by the Boston seamstress, who had been working in the house, and finished except for the hemstitching to be done on sleeves and collar. Peggy sewed neatly but erratically, exploding into violent protestations when her thread knotted or her scissors fell. Elizabeth found the steady rhythm of hemming rather soothing to her, especially to-day, when her heart was so heavy for her brother.

"Piggy's—I mean, Mr. Chambers' parents have sent the flat silver," Peggy announced, "and to my taste it's very hideous. It's the kind with a beading all around it. If you are going to have elaborate silver, why—have it. Have Cupids and little birds building nests, but if you are going to have it simple, why, then it's a crime, I think, to have a little trimming on it."

"You've got very good natural taste, Peggy—my mother says so."

"I know it. So's Ruth. I bet she hates this. Just think, Elizabeth, if you marry a man it's not only for keeps, but it's for every day, all the time, whether he likes the things you loathe or not."

"Have you shaken hands with anybody yet, Peggy?"

"No, I haven't. Have you seen your future husband again?"

"I passed him on the street yesterday. I like a boy that really takes his hat off, instead of fumbling at it."

"Tom certainly takes his hat off—like a streak."

"Too much like a streak. Besides, he always wears a cap."

"I like caps," said Peggy.

"I don't. I like hats. Bob Stoddard had a hat even at the picnic."

"Look here, Elizabeth," Peggy said, seriously, "I hope you really won't get interested in that Stoddard boy. It would be kind of uncanny, and I should feel too awfully responsible."

"You didn't do anything about it."

"I got you into this counting business. I don't really think there is anything in it, but if there was, I should feel guilty all the rest of my life. I don't want to have your marital unhappiness to consider, the way I expect to consider Ruth's."

"Mr. Chambers came back, didn't he?"

"I told you he would. They are on the porch now, having a pow-wow. Mother was so rejoiced over the prodigal's return that it was pitiful."

"Peggy, don't you wish that Ruth had just happened to fancy my Buddy, and to have married him instead?"

"Goodness, yes. Anybody. That doesn't sound very flattering. You know I would have adored it, but that's too great a piece of luck even to contemplate. I'd rather she'd marry—Bill Dean than Piggy Chambers.

"It would be nice to have lots of money," Elizabeth said, "and to have chauffeurs, and butlers, and tall, elegant footmen in green livery, and estates and things."

"Oh, yes, it would, if you didn't have to take any incumbrances with them. If you had to be handcuffed to a fat man, in addition, that would be something else again."

"Life is very bewildering. Don't you think so, Peggy?"

"It doesn't bewilder me. It disgusts me sometimes. All these mixups could be avoided, if people only wouldn't be short-sighted."

"Some trouble seems to come from other sources."

"Yes, but most all the things that people suffer from could be avoided if they weren't so silly. I notice that all the time."

"Well, so do I."

"Hark," said Peggy, "they're at it again. If they row like that before they are married, what will happen to them in their honeymoon stages?"

"He's going," Elizabeth said; "she's letting him out of the front door."

"Good riddance to perfectly good rubbish," said Peggy, "till dinner time."

"No," Ruth's clear voice rose, distinctly, "no, no. I mean what I say."

"So do I mean what I say. I'll see you at dinner."

"If you like."

"Oh, I like!"

"At seven then."

"At seven."

The door closed after him, and Ruth, looking wearier and paler than Elizabeth had ever seen her, opened the door that led from the reception room to the hallway, and came in.

"Take some seats," said Peggy, hospitably.

Ruth sank into a big wicker armchair without speaking.

"Lovely weather we're having for this time of year," Peggy continued, conversationally. "Ruth, dear, I love you."

"I'm glad of that," Ruth said.

"So do I!" said Elizabeth, timidly.

"I'm glad of that, too," said Ruth Farraday, with her charming, wistful smile. "Well, children, you don't need to go on with those dresses. You won't have occasion to wear them."

"What?" said Peggy.

"I've just told Mr. Chambers that I won't marry him."

"Does he know it?"

"Well, not exactly, Peggy—that's his trouble—but he will know it. I'm—I'm through."

"I don't believe it," Peggy said.

"I do, and that's the principal thing," Ruth said. "I never realized how he felt about certain things before. I hadn't given much thought to his attitude about the war and all that. I knew he had been a sort of pacifist, and that he had German friends and business connections. I like men to be broad-minded. I don't mind a man that sticks to honest conclusions, if they're sincere, but when I find they are coloured by physical or moral cowardice, why, then I—I'm through. Albert Chambers is a coward, and he's a selfish coward. We've had it all out and I know."

"Hooray," said Peggy, "I could have told you that any time this summer."

"And I'm through with marriage or any idea of marriage, so there we are."

"I don't envy you the sweet task of breaking it to Mother."

"Haven't you got any feeling, Peggy? Don't you care how hard the things are I've been going through?"

"Don't I?" said Peggy. She flung the folds of muslin wide, and made an impetuous dive for her sister. "Oh, Ruthie, Ruthie, Ruthie," she cried, "I'm so glad, I'm trying not to believe it, for fear it isn't so."

Ruth clung to her wordlessly.

"I love you, I love you," Peggy whispered.

"I tried to do the right thing," Ruth said. "It's been hard to know what was right."

"You're all right," said Peggy, feebly. "Excuse these tears all down your back, Ruthie."

"I've got to be at home for lunch," Elizabeth said. "I—I—they're expecting me."

"Don't mind us," Peggy said, "this is only a small family reunion."

"I think I'd really better go."

"I'll write a note to your brother, Elizabeth, when it's settled. Mr. Chambers doesn't even understand it yet, you know."

"I wouldn't have told Buddy unless you had told me to," Elizabeth said.

Ruth smiled.

"I might have known you wouldn't," she said, "your own kind of people have your own sense of decency, and the others never have."

"I'm so glad I seem to you like your own kind of people." Elizabeth took Ruth Farraday's out-stretched hand gratefully.

"Well, you do, dear, and you always have. On your own account, I mean." she added, quickly.

"That's what I meant, too," said Elizabeth, shyly.

It was hard to sit through the mid-day meal with the secret that would change Buddy's world for him locked in her breast, still Elizabeth managed it somehow. He looked very pale and worn, but the three men kept up a lively discussion of the impending Presidential campaign and other political matters. She noticed the respect that both her father and Buddy paid to Grandfather's opinions on all these subjects.

Elizabeth wondered how it could be that Buddy could laugh his hearty laugh, before he knew the thing that she could have told him or how, when the conversation turned to the question of bait for a day's fishing on the banks that the three men contemplated, he could discuss worms and fishing tackle so eagerly.

"Speaking of fish," Buddy said, "it seems to me that these are extraordinarily good herrings we are eating. I don't suppose there is any difference in herrings, but——"

"Well, you don't suppose right, then," Grandfather said, "there is as much difference in the herrings that come from Herring River and those you get over to the westward as there is between some folks. The meat's whiter and sweeter in the Herring River herrings. I used to think it was a great thing to go after them in the spring. It don't make no difference where a herring has been putting in his time in the other seasons, come spring he makes for the river bed where he was born. I've seen them so thick on their way up Herring River that they couldn't swim straight, but had to kind of flop over one side to make way for t'other. I used to get five cents a hundred for 'em, and kitch 'em as fast as I could haul 'em out."

"That isn't true, is it?" asked Elizabeth. "Do herrings go back to the place where they were born?"

"Yes, and sometimes they swim a great many hundreds of miles to get there. They seek the Southern waters in the cold weather, you know, but they always come back once a year to the stream in which they were born," Elizabeth's father explained to her.

"The place where their great-grandfathers were spawned. It's natural," Grandfather said.

"I guess it is natural," Elizabeth said, soberly.

"You bet it is," said Buddy.

They took a drive in the new roadster that afternoon, and Buddy seemed so happy and so free during the entire course of the day that Elizabeth was entirely unprepared to find him, as she found him some time after supper, flung across the bottom of the big four-poster bed in the guest room, with his head buried in his hands.

"Buddy," she said, "Buddy, dear."

"Oh, I'm all right, Sis. Run along."

"I thought perhaps you wanted to walk with me to the post office."

"I do, but it isn't time yet."

"It's nearly time."

"When it's time, we'll go."

"Buddy, I wouldn't feel too bad. Things mightn't be so dreadful as you think."

"They might, and then again they mightn't."

"I wouldn't give up."

"I've given up everything I can give up."

"You seem—pretty much all right."

"Live or die, sink or swim, survive or perish. Them's my slogans. I'll come through all right. I am all right. Got to be."

"Oh, Buddy," Elizabeth said, "you will be all right."

"It's a funny thing, little sister, that you don't irritate me more. It seems to me that you used to be quite an irritating child, and now I scarcely mind you, no matter how Paul Pryish or Polly Anna-ish you get."

"I could irritate you more if I wanted to."

"I'm perfectly willing to take that for granted."

Just as they reached the post office they met the Chambers' car piled with a full luggage equipment. Albert Chambers sat in lonely state within, looking neither to right nor left.

"He didn't go back to dinner, after all," Elizabeth thought, "or at any rate, he didn't stay."

Buddy made no comment on this encounter, but he walked composedly through the crowd overflowing the little building, his head held high, and all the colour drained from his white face. He even insisted on stopping at the drug store and regaling Elizabeth with her favourite marshmallow and maple nut sundae, though he refused all refreshment for himself.

"One thing that the life over there taught you was that you've got to get through every day somehow," he said, thoughtfully. "I wish ice-cream soda didn't drip so much. There's a row of pink rings and chocolate rings all along this counter. I don't like them."

"He thinks everything is perfectly horrid," Elizabeth said to herself, "and yet he doesn't give in. Oh, I think he's perfectly splendid!"

They made a detour and came out by the Flatiron field, where the station road divided itself into two separate byways in the crux of which was a letter box. Ruth Farraday was in the act of mailing a letter there. It dropped inside as Elizabeth and Buddy approached.

"I was just mailing you a letter," Ruth said.

"Can't I get it out?" Buddy asked.

"No," Ruth said, "turn and walk with me home, and I'll tell you. Elizabeth knows already. I've broken my engagement. No, don't say anything. I—I just want to tell you, that's all."

"There is so much I might say!" Buddy said.

"The reason I broke it has nothing to do with anything else—except that I broke it," she explained, incoherently. "It doesn't mean anything but that. I shall never marry now, I'm going into reconstruction work abroad."

"Not—not right away," Buddy said.

"As soon as I can make my plans—but there is one thing I want you to believe. I've written it in the letter, but I don't know whether I've managed to make it as clear as I meant to. I've broken my engagement only because Mr. Chambers and I were not suited to each other."

"I—know that," Buddy said.

"So this might just as well be good-bye between us."

"If you wish it so?"

"Do you doubt I wish it?"

"No," Buddy said, "I know how you feel."

"Then—then good-bye."

"Right here?" said Buddy. "I thought we were going to walk home with you."

"I'm nearly home," Ruth said. "Say it now, please."

"Good-bye," said Buddy. He stood looking at her for a moment, levelly into her eyes. Then he turned away, wheeling as if he were under orders to march.

"Tell me what you know, Elizabeth," he said, as they walked on, and Elizabeth told him of what had happened at the Farradays that morning.

"But I thought things were going to be all fixed," she concluded, miserably, "and now they seem to be in a worse tangle than ever. I don't see what she's sending you away for."

"That's all right," said Buddy. "I see."

"But she said it was good-bye between you."

"That's all right. It's an ethical question with her. She split up with him because she couldn't stand him, not because she wanted me. It's like a gentleman's agreement, you see. You enter into a mutual arrangement under the supposition that the other fellow is as decent as yourself. When you find he isn't, that releases you, unless the contract is actually signed. If he'd been all right, she would have stuck. She wants me to understand that."

"But you do understand it, and I don't see why she has to be so cool."

"I want her to be cool," said Buddy. "What do you think I wanted? To go in and spend the evening?"

"Well, that would be better than this."

"No, it wouldn't," said Buddy.

"I don't understand you," Elizabeth said. "Perhaps you are not feeling very well, Buddy. You looked awfully pale there in the post office."

"I'm not pale now, am I?"

"No-o, but you look so kind of queer, and you act queer, too, Buddy. I understood why you respected her feelings when she wouldn't break her engagement, but now that she has, I don't see why you go right on respecting them. I—I thought you wanted to marry her yourself."

"Marry her? Why, I'm going to," said Buddy. "That's the point."

"When—when?" said Elizabeth.

"Just as soon as I can get three weeks' salary in my jeans."

"But she said she was going away, and—and everything."

"Oh, I'll attend to all that!" said Buddy, happily. "Don't you worry, Sister."