Leave Her to Heaven

by Ben Ames Williams

  Ruth did not see Ellen again during the next two or three days. Then one morning while she was helping Mrs. Berent make ready to receive her breakfast tray, she was called to the telephone, heard Richard on the line.

  ‘Did I wake you, Ruth?’

  ‘Oh no, I’ve been up and dressed long ago.’

  ‘Can I come to breakfast?’

  ‘Of course.’ Her breath caught, for his voice was hollow with pain. ‘What is it, Dick? Is anything wrong?’

  ‘Why — Ellen’s lost her baby,’ he said heavily. ‘She’s all right, but she lost the baby.’ Ruth for a moment could not speak, and he added: ‘I’m at the hospital, but she’s asleep now. I’ll get a taxi, come right along.’

  – III –

  Ellen was a month in the hospital, and at Ruth’s suggestion, Harland during these weeks took many of his meals with them. That first morning when he reached the house she thought he was emptied, like a collapsed balloon, all the life gone out of him. He talked much, repeating the same things over and over as though seeking some comfort in empty words. Ellen, he said, had walked in her sleep during the night, had fallen downstairs. Her cry woke him, and he was quickly at her side. She insisted she was unhurt, but almost at once they knew harm had been done, and Harland summoned Doctor Patron, who took her to the hospital. The baby — a lusty boy — was dead.

  Ruth and Mrs. Berent comforted Harland with empty commonplaces and persuaded him to lie down for a few minutes on the bed in Professor Berent’s room. Ruth, full of maternal tenderness, went to show him the way. She made him remove his coat and tie, loosed and took off his shoes and covered him over.

  He slept till noon. When he woke, Ruth thought he would go at once to the hospital, but he made no move. She proposed to telephone Doctor Patron. He agreed, and she did so; but the doctor said Ellen was sleeping, under a sedative.

  ‘She’s perfectly all right.’ Ruth wondered why he spoke so curtly. ‘But she won’t know any of you for a day or two.’ He added: ‘Of course, Mr. Harland can see her.’

  Ruth reported this to Harland, and he nodded in a dull way. ‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ he said. He had lunch with them, then went out, promising to return for dinner; but at dinner time a message was telephoned from the club that Mr. Harland would be unable to come.

  Ruth was almost relieved, glad he would not see Mrs. Berent; for after his departure she had spoken of Ellen with a bitter anger which Ruth dared not understand. The older woman was so disturbed that Ruth wished to call Doctor Saunders, but the proposal roused Mrs. Berent’s wrath again, so Ruth was glad when she fell fitfully asleep.

  Harland appeared for lunch next day, tired and drawn. ‘I couldn’t come last night,’ he confessed. ‘I tried playing bridge, thought it might give me something to think about; and before I realized it, I’d had too many highballs. I slept at the club.’

  Ruth nodded understandingly. ‘I don’t wonder,’ she said. ‘I hope it did you good.’ Her concern for Mrs. Berent had kept her from too much thought of Ellen, and when Harland now asked how the older woman was, thinking that to distract him might serve in his case a like end, she confessed: ‘Why, she was pretty sick last night, and she’s exhausted today.’ She gave details, anxious to help him forget Ellen for a while; but she saw that he listened without attention, his thoughts still his own, his mouth set in grim lines. ‘I wish I could go with you to see Ellen,’ she said at last. ‘But I can’t — and it’s you she’ll want to see, anyway.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ he admitted; and when she looked at him in surprise he said evasively: ‘I hate hospitals, always did, even when Danny was at Warm Springs.’ His voice caught and he hesitated, said grimly: ‘But I’ll go, of course.’

  During the weeks Ellen stayed in the hospital, Ruth was frightened by the settled hopelessness in him, refusing to guess its cause. The loss of their baby must have been a heavy blow, but other men had suffered thus and still kept a high heart; and it was not like Harland to surrender so completely to despair. He breakfasted at home, and worked every morning. ‘Or at least I try to,’ he told Ruth drily. ‘But I don’t accomplish anything. I’m like a boy watching the clock, waiting for school to let out.’ Every day he walked up the hill to lunch with her — Mrs. Berent, from the day Ellen lost her baby, never came downstairs, and Doctor Saunders was a regular caller now — and in the afternoon, if Ruth had an errand to do, Harland took her place at the older woman’s bedside. Ruth sometimes came home to find him reading aloud while Mrs. Berent drowsed contentedly, or they might be talking quietly together. But always there was in Harland that profound, surrendering dejection, and she wished to challenge him back to bold strength again, but dared not, dreading his reply.

  She often took advantage of these free hours when he stayed with Mrs. Berent to go to the hospital to see Ellen. She found the other frail and thin; but she saw too that Ellen was animated by some inner excitement. She talked a great deal, and was extravagantly gay. There was something desperate and frantic in this gaiety, as though Ellen threw out a screen of laughing words to ward off thoughts of which she was afraid.

  She asked always for news of Harland; and Ruth was puzzled by this, since he now saw Ellen almost every day. But when she said so, Ellen exclaimed:

  ‘I know. He comes to see me, but he’s just — visiting the sick! You know, the heavy smell of flowers and the funereal air!’ She laughed in a brittle way. ‘When he’s here, I feel like a corpse all laid out in her coffin. He’s so persistently cheerful that it’s worse than if he cried all the time!’

  ‘He doesn’t like hospitals,’ Ruth remembered. ‘But he’ll be fine when you’re able to go home.’

  ‘I know you’re taking good care of him. He tells me every day how wonderful you are.’

  ‘Yes, he has lunch and dinner with me every day.’

  ‘With you and Mother?’

  ‘Mother’s not coming downstairs much,’ Ruth explained, keeping her tone as casual as possible so that Ellen need not be worried about Mrs. Berent. ‘He’s with her now.’ She smiled. ‘Mother always liked him, you know. She’s perfectly happy for me to leave her, if he’s there.’

  ‘Be nice to him,’ Ellen urged. ‘Poor man! I’ve failed him completely, but I’ll make it up to him by-and-by.’

  Mrs. Berent, during this time while Ellen was still in the hospital, changed in a frightening way. She who had been so vocal now seldom spoke; and when she did, it was in a flat and spiritless tone. It was as though she withdrew behind a wall of silence; and Ruth sometimes thought her silence was like Ellen’s vivacity, that each of them erected a protective barrier against something of which they were afraid.

  She had her own forebodings, for it was clear that Mrs. Berent’s strength was failing. When Ruth more and more often insisted upon summoning Doctor Saunders, the older woman now received him unprotestingly. After half an hour with her, on one of these visits, he said with hollow professional cheerfulness:

  ‘All you need is rest and plenty of it, Mrs. Berent. You’ll be right as rain presently.’

  Ruth thought that doctors were sometimes wrong to treat their patients like ignorant children, who could be soothed with fairy tales; and Mrs. Berent answered him with some of her old spirit. ‘Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Doctor! I know what’s happening to me.’ Then in a different tone she added: ‘It’s all right. I’ve lived longer than I wish I had, already.’ Ruth standing by, pressed her hand to her throat to quiet the beating of her heart there.

  ‘Pshaw!’ he protested. ‘You’ll live to bury the lot of us.’

  ‘Bury?’ she echoed. ‘I thought cremation was the latest style!’ Ruth knew she was thinking bitterly of Ellen’s insistence at the time of Professor Berent’s death. So often nowadays, when Mrs. Berent spoke of her daughter, it was with something implacable and unrelenting in her quiet tones. Today, after the doctor was gone, she said, apropos of nothing:

  ‘You know, Ruth, there’s never been a sleepwalker in our family!’

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nbsp; Ruth did not answer, remembering guiltily that she too had had this ugly thought. Ellen, as far as she knew, had never walked in her sleep till that night she fell; but even though this were true, the implications were intolerable. Ruth was glad now that she had never told her mother about Ellen’s painting the pantry, about Ellen’s slipping out of the house at night to walk herself into exhaustion.

  There were other occasions when Mrs. Berent’s words suggested more than they said. ‘I’d like to see Leick again,’ she remarked one day, and Ruth guessed she was remembering Danny and blaming Ellen for his death.

  ‘You’ll see him when we go to Bar Harbor,’ she said reassuringly.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll go to Bar Harbor this summer,’ Mrs. Berent murmured. ‘I think I’ll be happier staying quietly in one place.’ And Ruth felt a cold touch on her heart.

  Ellen in due time left the hospital, but she still stayed abed all day. Ruth would have gone to see her, but Mrs. Berent grew weaker all the time, and she refused to have a nurse, so Ruth was bound to her side. Harland came less often to the house on Mount Vernon Street, and Ellen came not at all.

  One night after Ruth had prepared her for sleep, and had turned out the bed light, Mrs. Berent said: ‘Ruth, be good to Richard. He’ll need you.’

  ‘Of course,’ Ruth assented. ‘Good night, now, Mother.’

  ‘Good night, my dear.’

  In the morning when Ruth went to her, Mrs. Berent seemed still asleep, breathing a little heavily; but Ruth could not rouse her, and she did not come back to consciousness during the three days more before she died.

  – IV –

  Their home, Ruth and Ellen agreed, should be sold. It was much too big for Ruth alone, and they quickly found a buyer. Ruth was to give possession on the first of July, and since this meant they must make some disposition of the furniture, Ellen, as soon as she was strong enough, came one day to go over everything with Ruth. Many things would go to the auction rooms. A few pieces Ruth wished to keep for the small apartment into which she planned to move; but Ellen claimed nothing. Only in that upper room where she and her father had worked together did she hesitate; but then she said:

  ‘You’ll have to do this room, Ruth. I can’t bear to — see these things go. But of course they must.’ Yet she elected to stay in that upper room for a while alone. ‘I guess I’m sentimental,’ she confessed. ‘I want to stay and say good-bye to Father, all by myself.’ When she joined Ruth downstairs, a few minutes later, she suggested that the museum might like some of the specimens, and Professor Berent’s notes and papers, and Ruth promised to have a man come and select what he chose. The auctioneer could take the rest.

  A week later Ruth moved to the Hotel Tarleton, not far from Harland’s Chestnut Street home, to stay while she chose an apartment. She thought Harland and Ellen might wish to go to Bar Harbor for the summer, and dining with them a day or two later, she proposed this. Harland looked doubtfully at Ellen.

  ‘Would you like that?’ he asked. It was the first time since the baby’s death that Ruth had seen them together, and she could not blind herself to the change in their relationship. Ellen was outwardly as she had always been, but Harland showed no trace of tenderness.

  ‘No, no!’ Ellen told him sharply. ‘No, I don’t want to stay in any one place.’ And she said wistfully: ‘I’d like to go back to New Mexico, but we can never go back, can we, Richard? Never recapture what was so perfect once.’

  ‘No, we can’t go back,’ he assented. ‘When a thing’s done, it’s done.’

  His tone was sombre, and Ruth saw Ellen look at him with something desperate in her eyes. ‘No, we must do something exciting!’ she cried. ‘Something we’ll both enjoy.’ Then, as though on sudden inspiration: ‘I know! Ruth, when we went through the house, I saw Father’s fishing rods and things. Did you let them go?’

  ‘No,’ Ruth assured her. ‘They’re in storage. I kept all his personal things, and Mother’s.’

  Ellen spoke quickly. ‘Well, listen, Richard. There’s a salmon river up in Canada that Father and I used to plan to fish, sometime. The Miminegouche. Darling, let’s go there. Father and I found out all about it. We can take our canoes to a town on a lake at the headwaters and go downstream, fish as we go, trout and grilse at first, and then salmon. Father and I met a man in Newfoundland who had done it. He said the upper river’s beautiful.’ She went on, giving details, speaking more and more rapidly, in a rising animation. ‘We can take a week, or two weeks, or a month,’ Ellen urged. ‘Oh, Richard, it would be wonderful!’

  Harland hesitated. ‘I’m not sure you’re well enough,’ he objected. ‘Not sure you can stand it.’ He looked at Ruth. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  Ellen said angrily: ‘You two! Don’t you suppose I know what I can stand, Richard?’ Then, before Ruth could speak, she cried in an eager tone: ‘I know! We’ll take Ruth along! Then if I play out, she can take care of me. Not that I’m likely to. I’ll be fit as can be, once I get away from here. Ruth, you’ll be lonesome without us, with Mother gone. I think that’s the perfect idea. We’ll all go.’

  Ruth laughed. ‘I’m no fisherwoman, Ellen.’

  ‘You’ll learn! I caught a salmon the first day I fished.’ She persuaded them with many urgencies, and Ruth thought she was like a teasing child, her eyes flashing from one of them to the other, alert for any sign of yielding in either, pouncing on the first hint of surrender, driving hard through the least breach in their defenses, winning her way as she always had.

  Ruth let Harland make the decision. She saw deep weariness in him, and it seemed to her that his need was greater than Ellen’s. Ellen, even in anticipation, was stimulated, full of eagerness; and Harland in the end agreed for Ellen’s sake. Ruth agreed for his.

  – V –

  They alighted from the train, one early morning in July, at a well-kept little station labelled Hazelgrove; and Leick — he had come ahead to secure guides — was waiting to meet them. Of the guides, one was a fair-haired, lean youngster whom Ruth guessed to be still in his teens and whose name was Tom Pickett. The other, older than Leick, was Simon Verity; a cheerful, small man with shoulders so heavy they seemed almost deformed. Both dwelt here in this village in the wilderness, and Jem Verity, through whom their services had been engaged, assured Harland they were good men.

  ‘Sime has been poaching deer and salmon down the river all his life,’ he said, ‘and lumbering in the winter, and if he can’t find you a few salmon, there ain’t nobody can. Tom ain’t so way wise, but he can handle a canoe and an axe, and he’s a good camp cook, and he learns quick. Anything you want done, you tell him. He’ll pick up the know-how in no time.’ He added, like a good merchant: ‘I been over your outfit with Leick. Might be a few more things you’ll need. I’ve got anything you’ve a mind to ask for, at the store.’

  From the station, only a scattering farm or two was visible; but Jem’s car took them to the village. The houses seemed to Ruth neat and attractive, bright in white paint, each with its cropped lawn; and most of them had flower beds that gave a splash of color. The presiding genius of the store was Mrs. Verity, an enormously fat woman with a merry, understanding eye, and Ruth liked her at once. Harland and the guides and Jem discussed their needs; and watching Harland speak with these men, Ruth saw that there was already a change in him. It had begun when they stepped off the train and the sweet scent of the dew-wetted forest met their nostrils. He seemed suddenly at home.

  After their purchases were made, Leick took Harland to secure licenses and forest permits, Ruth and Ellen waiting with the other guides at the wharf; but when Harland returned, the boatman who would run them down the lake had not appeared, and Harland and Jem Verity had to fetch him. Before they came back, the gear was loaded, the canoes harnessed for towing, and at once they were away.

  In the motorboat bound down the lake, Ellen stood in the bow and Ruth and Harland sat in the stern; and Ruth asked many questions. How did people live, in a town like this: by fa
rming? Hunting? Trapping? How many people were there in the village? What did their futures hold?

  ‘You’re as full of questions as Mrs. Barrell, our boatman’s wife,’ he said, amused. ‘When Jem and I went to get him, she kept up a rapid fire as long as we were within hearing.’

  ‘I know how she feels.’ Ruth smiled. ‘It must be terrible to be filled with lively curiosity — and at the same time to know everything about all your neighbors, so that there’s nothing about which to be curious. Probably seeing someone she didn’t know went to her head!’

  Tom Pickett and Sime sat on the load of gear and sucked foul pipes in relaxed silence. Ellen stood beside Wes Barrell at the wheel, her head bare, her dark hair flying; but after a while she turned to watch Ruth and Harland and saw them laughing together. Ruth became conscious of her steady scrutiny and was uneasy under it, for no reason except that Ellen’s eyes never left them. She rose at last to pick her way forward, and she asked Ellen:

  ‘Glad we’re on our way?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did the train tire you?’

  ‘Heavens, no! I’m never tired except in cities.’ And Ellen said: ‘You and Richard were having such a good time back there. I enjoyed watching you.’

  ‘I’d never seen at close range a little town like that one,’ Ruth explained. ‘And he was telling me about it.’

  Wes Barrell beside them grinned and said there was darned little to tell. ‘Nothing ever happens there,’ he declared. ‘Drives my old woman crazy!’

  Ruth began to ask him about his family, but she found herself presently answering questions rather than asking them; and Ellen left them together, going back to join Leick and Harland, who now in the stern were talking quietly.

  When they reached the foot of the lake, the dam tender, an asthmatic old man who continually panted, like a dog on a hot day, came from his cabin to greet them. It was the driest June he could remember, he said; and Ruth, going with Harland and Ellen to look at the dam while the men built a luncheon fire, saw the stream bed almost completely bare. Leick joined them.