“I feel guilty,” she told Henrietta. “I go flying off and you stay here and take care of the grandparents.”
“It is what I want to do,” Henrietta said.
Ruth paused in the folding of a silky film. “You would like Candace if you let yourself. Everybody does. She’s very easy.”
“I daresay I would like Candace but there’s William,” Henrietta replied with her terrible honesty.
“He is your brother,” Ruth persisted, though timidly. She was equally afraid of Henrietta and William.
“I can’t help that,” Henrietta replied. “Don’t forget I knew him long before you did — and much better. We had those two years together at the Chefoo school when you were at home in Peking with Papa and Mama.”
Nevertheless, when Ruth was gone, when she had waved to the pretty face under the flowery hat, smiling through the train window, Henrietta knew she was lonely. Like William’s the lines of her face were severe and her frame was angular and tall. Inside she was like him and yet how unlike! She was so like him that she could see in herself his very faults. She had no sense of humor, neither had he. But in their spirits there was no likeness. She was possessed with honesty and a depth of simplicity that frightened away all but the brave, and among the young there are few who are brave. Young men feared her and young girls avoided her. There remained Clem, whom she never had seen and who had never seen her. To Clem, in long silent summer evenings, she poured out her feelings almost unrestrained. He answered her letters on Sundays, when he had sent Bump to church. He had no other vacant hour throughout the week. Even on Sundays he had to work on the books for Mr. Janison.
She went to a small girls’ college, an inexpensive one, while Ruth had decided to go to Vassar. She did not want to be with Ruth for by then even she could see that Ruth had chosen William and the sort of life he wanted. She listened to Ruth’s accounts of that life, repelled and forlorn. Ruth’s flying blond hair, her sweet blue eyes, her white skin and slender shape were the means whereby she was welcomed in William’s life. William was living in a beautiful house, neither large nor small, on Fifth Avenue. Candace had furnished it in pink and gray and gold. There was a great room where they gave parties. It had been two rooms but William had ordered the wall between taken down. William worked fearfully hard and his paper was getting to be successful. Everybody was talking about it.
“We ought to be proud of him,” Ruth said.
Henrietta did not answer this. She sat gazing at Ruth rather stolidly and no one could have known that she was in her heart giving up this younger sister whom she tenderly loved. When Ruth came back from a long summer spent with William, she had been prepared to tell her about Clem. She had planned it in many ways. She might say, “Ruth, I don’t want you to think I’m in love, but …” Or she might say, “Do you remember the Faith Mission family in Peking? Well, I know Clem again.” Or she might simply choose one of Clem’s letters, perhaps the one that explained how he wanted to open a chain of markets, right across the country, in which people could buy good food cheaply, or if they had no money, they could simply ask for it free. “People don’t ask unless they must — that is, most people,” Clem had written. He had a deep faith in the goodness of people. People didn’t like to beg or to be given something for nothing. The human heart was independent. Henrietta was moved by the greatness of Clem’s faith. In her loneliness she wanted desperately to believe that this was true. But when Ruth talked about William, Henrietta could not tell her about Clem. The two names were not to be linked together.
Then one day she saw something new in Ruth’s face, a quiver about the soft lips, a shyness in those mild eyes. Ruth, catching the loving query in Henrietta’s look, suddenly collapsed into tears, her arms around Henrietta’s neck and her body flung across her sister’s lap.
“Why, baby,” Henrietta breathed. She had not used the name since they had been little girls playing house, and she had always been the mother and Ruth her child. She put her arms about the small creature now and hugged her, and felt how strangely long it was since she had offered a caress to anyone. She and Ruth had not been demonstrative in recent years, and there was no one else.
“I’m in love,” Ruth sobbed. “I’m terribly, terribly in love.”
“Don’t cry,” Henrietta whispered. “Don’t mind, Ruthie. It’s all right. It’s not wrong. Who is it?”
“Jeremy,” Ruth said in the smallest voice.
Henrietta did not release her hold. She tried to remember Jeremy’s face as she had seen it when William graduated from college. A nice face, rather thin, very pale, very kind, this she remembered. Then she remembered slow, rather careful movements, as though something inside hurt him, and very pale and delicate hands, bony and not small.
“Does he know?” she asked.
“Yes, he does,” Ruth said. She slid from Henrietta’s lap to the floor and leaned against her knee and wiped her eyes with the edge of Henrietta’s gingham skirt. “He told me first — I wouldn’t have dared—”
“You mean you are engaged?” Henrietta asked.
Ruth nodded. “I suppose so — as soon as he dares to tell. Candace knows, but none of us dares to tell William.”
“Why not?” Henrietta said with fierceness. “Is there any reason why it is his business?”
“It just seems to be,” Ruth said.
“Nonsense,” Henrietta replied.
Her mind flew to Clem. Was not this the moment to reveal that she too was beginning to love? But still she could not speak of him.
“I’ll tell William myself,” she declared.
“Oh no,” Ruth said quickly. “Jeremy wants to do it. He will, one of these days. I don’t know why he thinks William won’t like it.”
“I know,” Henrietta said. Her voice was gloomy. “William doesn’t want the people he goes about with to think he has any family at all. Nobody is good enough for him.”
“That’s not quite true,” Ruth said. “William’s very nice to me, usually.”
“Because you always do what he says,” Henrietta said.
“Well, usually I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t,” Ruth said. “Anyway, it’s to be kept a secret for a while.”
She got up from the floor and went to the mirror and smoothed her curls. The intimate moment was over. William had broken it as he always did, and Henrietta said nothing about Clem.
The college year began again and the sisters parted.
Clem’s Sunday letters reached Henrietta on Wednesday. She had chemistry laboratory on Wednesday afternoons and among her test tubes she read the long, closely written letter lying between her notes. Then one week there came the letter she had not expected. On Thursday she scarcely ever bothered to go to see whether she had mail, but that day she had happened to pass by the office and, on the chance that there might be a rare letter from her mother, she stopped and found instead another letter from Clem.
“Do I have to be home early?” Bump had inquired.