Leave Her to Heaven (29 page)

When Harland went away, Ruth at his suggestion had offered Mrs. Huston a place with her; but the old woman declined. ‘I'll work for him when he wants me, as long as I can get around,' she said. ‘But with him away, I'll take a rest while I can.' She had at first gone to live with her daughter; but Ruth kept in touch with her, and she knew that this spring Mrs. Huston had returned to Harland's house to dwell there alone, preferring independence and the routine of caring for familiar things to idleness in her
daughter's home. So when Ruth returned to Boston now she telephoned Mrs. Huston, and offered to help, if any help were needed, in making the house ready for Harland's coming; but Mrs. Huston said proudly: ‘There hasn't been a day for months that he couldn't walk in the front door any time he had a mind and find things the way he likes them!'

With his return imminent, Ruth was increasingly happy at the prospect of seeing him again. It was as though during this year of his absence she had been merely marking time. When the day came, she waited for his call, and in late afternoon her telephone rang and she sped to answer.

‘Ruth?' His voice, she thought instantly, was at once stronger and more youthful.

‘Yes, Dick. You sound so well!'

‘“Richard is himself again,”' he assured her. ‘I got in an hour ago. How shall we celebrate?'

‘Come to dinner.'

‘No, we've a lot to talk about, and I don't want any interruptions. I don't want to share you with your kitchenette. Let's make it the Copley. Seven?'

‘Seven, then,' she agreed.

‘I'll pick you up,' he said. ‘We'll talk for twenty-four hours without a break.'

When she had hung up she was astonished to find her eyes wet with grateful tears, and happiness shook her and made her tremble. By the clock on her mantel, he would not be here for almost three hours, yet she felt that she must hurry, that there were so many things she must do before he came. Her hair, she decided, needed shampooing, so she was happily busy for a while. She used another half-hour in manicuring her nails, and then began to consider what she would wear — not that he would notice what she wore. She assured herself of this, yet hesitated painfully. She did not even know whether he would be in dinner clothes, and wished to telephone to ask him, and could not bring herself to do so, and compromised at last — since the evening was warm — on a print which seemed to her attractive and not unsuitable.

When she was ready, tremulously happy, she laughed at her own reflection in the mirror. ‘You idiot!' she exclaimed. ‘You're as excited as a girl going to her first dance — and you look it!' And then, with a toss of her head, ‘Well, why shouldn't you be glad to see him? And why pretend you're not?'

Then the bell rang and she ran to click the latch for him; and when the elevator stopped at her floor she hurried to open the door. He came in with a cry of pleasure.

‘Well!' he exclaimed, and caught her hand and said: ‘My, but I'm glad to see you.' He kissed her cheeks, one and then the other; and she felt her eyes fill again.

‘Heavens!' she laughed. ‘Why should I be crying? You look so well, Dick!'

He was in fact brown from much sun and wind, his eyes bright. He seemed a little heavier than he had been, and she said so.

‘So do you!' he assured her. ‘Golly! I didn't realize how anxious I was to see you till I left Chicago on the last lap.' And he asked: ‘All ready?'

She laughed, remembering her hours of preparation. ‘Yes. Yes, I'm ready, Dick,' she agreed. Absurd, absurd, absurd, this torrent of happiness that filled her now!

That evening they were gay, interrupting their rapid fire of talk only when the orchestra played something that led them to the dance floor; and Harland said approvingly: ‘I'd forgotten what a swell dancer you are. Remember Sea Island?'

‘I seldom dance,' she confessed.

‘Nor I,' he agreed. ‘But I'm in a dancing mood tonight. If I'd known what fun it would be to come home I'd have done it long ago.'

They stayed till the tables all around them were empty; and afterward they walked toward the Esplanade, and since the night was pleasantly warm, they clung to these first hours together. The eastern sky was paling before at last he left her at her door.

They saw each other frequently that fall. Sometimes these encounters were prearranged, with a football game or the like as a pretext; but occasionally, without forewarning, he rang her bell and demanded a cocktail, and she always welcomed him. They wished to celebrate Thanksgiving together, so they drove into the country and dined at the Wayside Inn by an open fire, and sat late before the embers there. Christmas too, they shared. She had declined an invitation or two and so had he.

‘Christmas is a family time,' he reminded her. ‘And we're the only family either of us has, so we'll get together and be as merry as any of them.' But on Christmas Eve, at her suggestion, they joined a group and went singing carols around the hill, stopping here and there for a hospitable eggnog.

In January he departed for a week of skiing and she missed him astonishingly. Ruth had never learned to ski, but he volunteered to teach her; and thereafter they sometimes drove into the wintry countryside and sought an easy slope and he labored with her through the short afternoons, and they were apt to stop somewhere for dinner on the homeward way. They found in this steady comradeship their greatest pleasure. Ruth was happy because she saw the mounting happiness in him, and since he so often came to her without forewarning she kept herself free and was always ready to do what he proposed. He had kissed her, that first evening, as naturally as in the past, in frank brotherly affection; and this straightforward liking — and nothing more — lay on the surface of their hours together. Yet Ruth presently understood that beneath this friendly surface there were depths, and she confessed this to herself and wondered if he knew. She believed he did not, guessing that if he suspected the truth it might destroy this pleasant companionship which she found so contenting.

He was working, once more rewriting that novel begun so long ago. ‘I started it before Danny was taken sick,' he told her. ‘And I rewrote it after Ellen and I were married, but now it seems to me thin stuff with no meat in it, like a woman who has starved herself to get what she thinks is a good figure.'

She listened while he read parts of it aloud to her; and if he asked, she offered comments. They were seldom favorable. ‘But my opinions are just — my opinions,' she reminded him.

‘I know, I know,' he assured her. ‘Don't worry. If I don't agree with what you say, that's the end of it; but it helps me to talk the thing out with you.' And he told her: ‘Argue with me! Fight for your ideas! That's the most stimulating thing you can do.'

To one point she came back again and again. Because he wrote with the derisive intolerance of immaturity, critics had called him a satirist; and accepting their label he had made this novel a catalogue of petty human follies. But she thought his thesis too severe. ‘You're forever emphasizing the silly things people do, making fun of them in clever ways,' she urged. ‘Of course it's ever so easy to do that. Everyone is ridiculous in some special little fashion. But in other ways everyone is admirable too. It's easy to make fun of people, but it's not so easy to recognize the fine things in them. This just isn't my kind of book, I'm afraid. You're — jeering at the world, but I think most people are pretty nice!'

He protested laughingly: ‘My God, woman, look at them!'

She shook her head. ‘That's what you do! You look at them! But instead of just looking, you ought to get inside them, see how many of the unattractive things they do are done because they're shy, or embarrassed, or worried, or scared; see how often they're really doing the best job they know how — and usually with not much capacity or ability to do any job at all.' And she said earnestly: ‘Why, Dick, the world is full of men who never have an hour free from worry — about their jobs, their families, their homes, money, all sorts of things. But they go ahead, keep their chins up, keep telling their wives that everything is fine; and they make a home, and give their children a better start in the world than they had. Most men are pretty grand, Dick.'

‘How about women?' he asked quizzically, and she colored and smiled and said:

‘You're making fun of me; but I'm going to say my say! Women are fine too, most of them. Oh, I know we wear funny
hats, and go to silly lectures, and play bridge like fiends, and talk and talk; but a lot of us — most of us — are doing our jobs, too. The trouble with you novelists is that you like to write about the unusual people, the extraordinary people. Or you write about the unusual, extraordinary things people do. Why not write about the ordinary everyday things all of us ordinary people do?'

‘Because if I did, you ordinary people wouldn't read what I wrote,' he assured her. ‘Novels, like newspapers, are built on the unusual, the exciting, the tragic, the dramatic. Such events make news. By your rule, papers would come out with big headlines: “No News Today. A Hundred Million Americans Yesterday Led Perfectly Normal Lives.”'

‘Well, they did,' she reminded him, laughing, yet holding her ground. ‘And a really good novelist could write about them in such a way that they'd love to read it.' She added with a strong sincerity: ‘Instead of ridiculing people's ridiculous ways, I'd like to see you glorify the glorious things they do.'

‘The other's a lot more fun.'

‘I know. Just as there are some critics who prefer to write about poor books, so they can say clever, cutting things. They'll take pages to tell you how poor a book is, just so they can show off their own cleverness in doing so.'

‘But see here,' he argued. ‘In this book of mine, the hero — he's a good fellow, with sound ideas. At least he has the fundamental virtues.'

‘All except the big ones,' she objected.

‘What are they?'

‘Why — humility, I think, and tolerance, and to be steadfast and to be friendly. He's too ready to — denounce someone!'

‘So was Christ,' he suggested.

‘He denounced people for important things! Your young man doesn't care what he denounces. Why should he waste his energies criticizing millinery, for instance?'

‘Didn't Christ criticize someone for making broad his phylactery? Aren't phylacteries millinery?'

She felt a deep surprise. ‘I didn't suppose you knew the Bible.'

He confessed with a shy grin: ‘Oh, an author has to know a little about everything. As a matter of fact I read it through — or almost — while I was away. Started at the beginning and ploughed right along — till I got into the Acts and got bored and lost interest. I skipped through the rest, but the Old Testament's grand.'

‘Why did you read it?' she asked, watching him.

‘Well, I knew a lot of people had found — comfort in it; and I needed comfort, so I decided to give it a try.' He added honestly: ‘It did me good, too; or at least it made me feel better. I kept remembering how many people before me had reverently studied those pages. I even read the history of the Book. It takes me a year or two or three to write a novel, but it took seventeen hundred years to write the Bible. Scores of men collaborated in writing it, and hundreds of other men gave their whole lives to copying it and checking the copies for errors. They were called scribes, and their job was to make the copies, and then they counted every letter in every book, and how many times each letter occurred. That was so they'd be sure to catch any mistakes. A book that has been treasured as faithfully as that, for hundreds of years before the first printing press came along, is bound to have meat in it.'

Listening, seeing the earnestness in his eyes, the quick eagerness in his tones, she knew surely and deeply that she loved him and would always love him; and she smiled in proud tenderness and he saw her smile and asked: ‘What is it?'

‘I was just — being glad for you,' she evaded.

He chuckled. ‘That's a favorite trick of yours,' he remembered. ‘Being glad for other people.' Her heart lifted its beat, and he said comfortably: ‘You're pretty swell, you know.' She waited, half-breathless — wondering if he too had seen the flash of truth; but he began to put his manuscript away. ‘I'd keep you up all night if you let me,' he confessed. ‘You'll have to learn to send me home!'

They had, that second winter after Ellen's death, many such
hours together, and the pleasure they thus found insulated them against the world in which they lived. He usually declined the invitations that came his way, and she kept her time free for him. If he had put off an insistent hostess by pleading a previous engagement — only to take Ruth into the country for an afternoon of skiing — they avoided being seen, dining afterward at some little frequented inn; and their hours together assumed a clandestine quality at which they laughed like amused conspirators.

When spring began to come, they planned to have many picnic suppers, to drive down to remote beaches on the shore or to hidden lakes he knew, with steaks or chops to broil over an open fire; but for a while the weather served them ill. Not till the day before Easter did the signs promise a settled fine day for the morrow. Saturday evening he called her on the phone.

‘I tried to get you this afternoon,' he said. ‘How about Humarock tomorrow? We'll cook our dinner on the beach. If it's as warm as it is today, we might even swim.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry, Dick.'

‘Can't make it?' There was disappointment in his tone.

‘I — like to go to church on Easter Sunday,' she explained. As a matter of fact she went regularly; but this winter, whenever he proposed a Sunday expedition, she had agreed, making no objection.

‘That's right; it is Easter, isn't it?'

‘Yes.'

He hesitated, and she thought afterward she might have willed his next word. ‘See here,' he challenged, ‘is there any rule against my going with you?'

Her hand pressed her throat in a quick happy gesture. ‘Why no, I don't think so,' she said gravely. ‘Churches don't have many rules, you know.'

‘What time?' he asked, and she told him. ‘I'll pick you up,' he promised, and chuckled. ‘I haven't been to church since 1 was a boy in Sunday school.'

‘Then it's high time you did go!' she said lightly, but she turned away from the telephone in a quick gladness so great she found it hard to breathe.