CHAPTER XXV

Hilda Lightener's electric stopped before the apartment house where Bonbright Foote lived, and Hilda alighted. She ignored bell and speaking tube and ran upstairs to Bonbright's door, on which she knocked as a warning. Then she opened the door and called: "It's me.

Anybody home?"

n.o.body replied. She called again, and walked into the little living room where Ruth and Bonbright and Dulac had faced one another an hour before.... She called again. This time she heard a sound, m.u.f.fled, indistinct, but recognizable as a sob.

"Ruth!" she called, and went to the bedroom door. Now she could hear Ruth within, sobbing alarmingly.

"Ruth Foote," said Hilda, "what's the matter?... Where's Bonbright?...

I'm coming in."

She opened the door, saw Ruth outstretched on the bed, face buried in her pillow, sobbing with a queer, startling dryness. It was not the sob of a woman in an attack of nerves, not the sob of a woman merely crying to rest herself, nor the sob of a bride who has had a petty quarrel with her husband. It was different, alarmingly different. There was despair in it. It told of something seriously awry, of stark tragedy.

Hilda's years were not many, but her intuition was sure. She did not demand explanations, did not command Ruth to stop crying and tell what ailed her, but sat down quietly on the bed and stroked the sobbing girl's hair, crooning over her softly. "There!... There!..."

Gradually the tenseness, the dry, racking, tearing quality of Ruth's sobs, softened, ameliorated. Presently she was crying, quietly, pitifully.... Hilda breathed with relief. She did not know that for an hour Ruth had sat on the edge of her bed, still, tearless, staring blindly before her--her soul drying up and burning within her for lack of tears. She had been unable to cry. She had uttered no sound until Hilda's voice came in to her. Then she had thrown herself p.r.o.ne in that paroxysm of wrenching sobs....

"There!... There!..." Hilda crooned.

Ruth's hand crept out fumblingly, found Hilda's dress, and clutched it.

Hilda laid her warm hand over Ruth's cold fingers--and waited.

"He's--gone," Ruth sobbed, presently.

"Never mind, honey.... Never mind, now."

Ruth mumbled incoherently. After a time she raised herself on her arms and crouched beside Hilda, who put her arms around her and held her close, as she would have held a troubled child.

"You'll--despise me," Ruth whispered.

"I guess not." Hilda pressed Ruth's slenderness against her more robust body rea.s.suringly. "I don't despise folks, as a rule.... Want to talk now?"

She saw that the time for speech had come.

"He won't come back.... I saw it in his eyes."

"Who won't come back, dear?"

"Bonbright." Ruth drew a shuddering breath. Then haltingly, whimperingly, sobs interrupting, she talked. She could not tell it fast enough. It must be told, her mind must be relieved, and the story, pent up so long within her, rushed forth in a flood of despairing, self-accusing words. It came in s.n.a.t.c.hes, fragments, as high lights of suffering flashed upon her mind. She did not start at the beginning logically and carry through--but the thing as a whole was there. Hilda had only to sort it and rea.s.semble it to get the pitiful tale complete.

"You--you don't mean you married Bonbright like some of those Russian nihilist persons one hears about--just to use him and your position--for some socialist or anarchist thing? You're not serious, Ruth?... Such things aren't."

"I--I'd do THAT again," she said. "It was right--to do that--for the good of all those men.... It's not that--but the rest--not keeping to my bargain--and--Dulac. I would have--gone with him."

Hilda shook her head. "Not farther than the door," she said. "You couldn't--not after Bonbright has been such--such an idiotic angel about you."

"I would have--THEN."

"But you wouldn't now?"

"I--I can't bear to THINK of him...."

"Um!..." Hilda's expressive syllable was very like her father's. It was her way of saying, "I see, and I'll bet you don't see, and I'm not surprised particularly, but you'll be surprised when you find it out."

It said all that--to Hilda's satisfaction.

"He's been gone hours," Ruth said, plaintively, and Hilda understood her to refer to Bonbright.

"Time he was coming back, then," she said.

"He--won't come back--ever.... You don't know him the way I do." There was something very like jealousy in Ruth's tone. "He's good--and gentle--but if he makes up his mind--If he hadn't been that way do you think he could have lived with me the way he HAS?"

"He must have loved you a heap," Hilda said, enviously.

"He did.... Oh, Hilda, it wasn't wrong to marry him for what I did. ...

I hadn't any right to consider him--or me. I hadn't, had I?"

"I don't belong," said Hilda. "If I wasn't a wicked capitalist I might agree with you--MAYBE. I'm not going to scold you for it--because you THOUGHT it was right, and that always makes the big difference.... You thought you were doing something splendid, didn't you--and then it fizzled. It must have been tough--I can get that part of it.... To find you'd married him and couldn't get out of it--and that he didn't have any thousands of men to--tinker with.... Especially when you loved Mr.

Dulac." Hilda added the last sentence with shrewd intent.

"I don't love him--I don't.... If you'd seen him--and Bonbright..."

"But you did love him," Hilda said, severely Ruth nodded dumbly.

"You're sure Bonbright won't come back?"

"Never," said Ruth.

"Then you'd better go after him."

Ruth did not answer. She was calmer now, more capable of rational thought. What SHOULD she do? What was to be done with this situation?... Her brief married life had been a nightmare with a nightmare's climax; she could not bear a return to that. Her husband was gone. She was free of him, free of her dread of the day when she must face realities with him.... And Bonbright--she felt certain he would not want her to run after him, that, somehow, it would lower her even farther in his eyes if she did so. There was a certain dignity attaching to him that she dared not violate, and to run after him would violate it. There would, of necessity, be a scene. She would have to explain, beg, promise--lie. She did not believe she could lie to him again--nor that she could make him believe a lie. ... Pretense between them had become an impossibility.... She wanted him to know she had not gone with Dulac, would not go with Dulac. It seemed to her she could not bear to have him think THAT of her. She had made his love impossible, but she craved his respect. That was all.... She was freed from him--and it was better so. The phase of it that she did not a.n.a.lyze was why her heart ached so. She did not study into that.

"I don't want him--back," she said to Hilda. "It would be just like it was--before."

"What ARE you going to do, then? You've got to do something."

"I don't know.... Why must I do something? Why can't I just wait--and let him do what--whatever is done?"

"Because--if I know anything about Bonbright--he won't do a thing. ...

He'll just step aside quietly and make no fuss. I'm afraid he's--hurt.

And he's been hurt so much before."

"I'm--sorry." The words sounded weak, ineffectual. They did not express her feelings, her remorse, her self-accusation.

"Sorry?... You haven't cut a dance with him, you know, or kept him waiting while you did your hair.... You've more or less messed up his life. Yes, you have. There isn't any use mincing words. Your motives may have been lofty and n.o.ble and all that sort of thing--from your point of view. But HIS point of view is what I'm thinking about now....

Sorry!"