Part 3

He had eaten nothing since morning, but he was not conscious of hunger or faintness. He had been under such a mental strain that all physical sensations were dulled. He could not have told, had he been asked, when he last ate food. Matters seemed to him to be fast approaching a crisis in his life; he felt a vague terror of he knew not what,—some terrible catastrophe approaching. He had felt this fear-stricken presentiment growing within him rapidly during the last three days. None of his previous experiences of suffering in consequence of his wife’s conduct had so told upon him. No one of her unexplained or only too well explained absences from home had crushed him like this last one. As he sat hour after hour in this strange solitude, alone, as it almost seemed, in the universe, with the vast star-set dome of the sky above him and the vast rayless plains stretching around him, the near mountains looming up colossal and black like an eternal barrier in the west, he lived these absences all over again in full and harrowing detail.

The first one,—that was three years ago. How well he recollected his fright when he found her gone; the angry incredulity with which he heard Gammer Stein’s half-implied reflection on her character that night; the joy with which he welcomed her back the next morning, and the full acceptance he had given to her story of having been watching with the sick child of a neighbor, the child too sick to be left, and no one in the house who could be sent with a message to him. It was not many weeks before he knew that this was a shameful, shameless lie. And after that miseries had thickened in his life,—his own house a gathering-place of the disgraceful and the disgraced; his wife oftener and oftener absent, sometimes with excuse, sometimes without; her intimate associates men and women with whom no self-respecting person would consort; his earnings wasted on fineries or worse.

“It’s been just a hell on earth, that’s what it’s been,” he thought, as he buried his face in his hands at some of the reminiscences. That brief interval of quiet of a few months during which the last child had been born,—the little girl from whose unconscious influence over the mother’s heart he had hoped much,—recurred to him now, in this bitter retrospect, merely as an intensification of his woe. “And me hopin’ its bein’ a girl might maybe save her! I don’t see why I thought that’d make any difference if the boy didn’t!”

How vividly he recalled the day when they were discussing the baby’s name; and his wife having expressed the desire to give it her own name, he had taken heart from that, and said to her meaningly, “Would ye really like to have her called by your name, Rushy?” and she, in her usual flippant tone, and yet he fancied with a shade of feeling in her face, had answered, “You’ve got the boy named for you, an’ I should think the girl ought to be named for me; that’s no more ’n fair;” and he had made haste to reply, “Of course ’tain’t, an’ I’d rather call her Rushy than any other name ’n all the world, ’n’ you know that, wife, without my tellin’ ye; ’n’ she’s goin’ to favor you in looks, too; anybody with half an eye can see that a’ready; so there’ll be two Rushy Rikers the first thing ye know.” And when he said this his wife colored, and said, “I hope to goodness she’ll turn out better ’n the first Rushy Riker!” And he, poor fool, had gone about for many a week hugging that exclamation to his soul as an omen and token of good coming to their lives. But it was short-lived. Before her baby was three months old the old demons of love of admiration, excitement, finery, folly, and sin had got full hold again of her weak and unstable nature, and all was as bad as before, or worse.

Then came the most flagrant of all her misdemeanors,—the drunken frolic at the beer-garden and the disgrace of the lock-up; and after that all sense of shame or of restraint seemed to leave her; and finally, only a few weeks ago, the most daring of all her escapades, when, taking the baby, she had gone to Denver openly in the company of Nat Leeson and his sister; then it was that Zeph, at his wits’ end, had sold some of their furniture and his kit of carpenter’s tools to get money for the journey, put the boy into Gammer Stein’s motherly keeping, followed and tracked her; and for the first and only time exercising his husbandly authority over her, had brought her home. But it was only an enforced return. She was sullen, reluctant, full of hatred and reproaches. “A pretty home it was,” she said, “to bring a woman back to, stripped of half the furniture, and not a dollar to buy anything with!” If he’d let her alone, she’d make her own living an’ not be beholden to anybody.

“Hold your tongue, Rushy!” cried Zeph, the only time in his life he had thus spoken to her. “Don’t you dare to talk to me about makin’ your own livin’! If you’ll stay at home an’ keep decent, I’ll keep ye in as good a livin’ as folks o’ our station needs! I’d ha’ had a good house done for ye now, if ye’d done’s ye’d oughter.”

“It’s easy makin’ excuses,” she retorted; “ye never did have no spunk, an’ it’s a mighty poor livin’ ye’ll ever get in this world. I donno what’s hendered your buildin’ the house ’fore now, ’cept your own laziness!”

“I’ll tell ye what’s hendered me, Rushy,” replied Zeph, thoroughly angered,—“runnin’ round all creation huntin’ you, ’n’ sellin’ my tools to get money to follow ye an’ keep ye from comin’ on the town! That’s what’s hendered me; an’ ’twill hender me, too, s’ long’s ye go on as ye’re doin’!”

As Zeph lived over this bitterest of all their quarrels his heart smote him remorsefully.

“I expect I was too fierce with her,” he thought. “Perhaps if I’d been real lovin’ then she’d ha’ come round. She’s been lots worse ever since then, ’n’ I expect I didn’t manage right. I’ll try ’n’ see if I can’t be different to her to-morrow when she comes home. She’s had the children along with her this time, ’n’ that’s some comfort.”

It was near morning when Zeph finally fell into an uneasy sleep. His sorrows pursued him even there, and he dreamed a nightmare dream of seeing his wife at the window of a burning house and being unable to move hand or foot to her rescue. He opened his eyes with the horror of this dream full upon him, and for the first second thought the dream was no dream, but actual truth; for the sky over his head and the whole front of the mountain range on his right were red as from the light of a conflagration. Bewildered, he sprang to his feet with a cry, but in the same second sank down again, saying, “It’s only the sun a comin’ up! Lord! How it scared me!”

It was the marvellous rosy dawn peculiar to high altitudes. So vivid, so fiery a glow does it spread over both sky and earth for a few seconds before sunrise, that when the sun is above the horizon, and the day fairly breaks, the light seems less, and not more, and the earth and sky darkened instead of illumined.

All was still in the freighters’ camp. A few faint upward curls of smoke in the distant town were the only signs of life in the beautiful landscape. As Zeph gazed on the picture he felt insensibly strengthened.

“’T don’t seem ’s if folks need to suffer so ’n such a world ’s this,” he thought; “things must come out right, sooner or later, somehow, if there’s any kind o’ reason ’n anything. It don’t look no ways likely that God set it all a goin’ jest to make folks miserable! I expect it’s all our own fault, somewheres, if things goes wrong! I believe Rushy ’n’ I’ll get on yet. If I could once rake ’n’ scrape money enough to take her clean out o’ this place ’n’ begin over again, that would be best; but how to fetch that about I don’t see!”

Time slipped by imperceptibly to Zeph absorbed in his reverie, and an hour or more had gone, when he was roused by the sounds of stirring in the camp. Hastily concealing himself in a ravine, he lay stretched along the ground, only his eyes above the edge of the mesa, and watched every movement. He saw his wife and Sal come out, the children following, the fires lighted in the camp stoves, the preparations for cooking begun. Presently he saw Nat Leeson stroll up towards the stoves and stop to talk with his sister.

“If I see him go nigh Rushy I’ll do some harm, I know I shall,” said Zeph. “I’ll not risk it. I’ll leave here.” And darting down the ravine he set off by a circuitous route, on which he could not be seen, towards home.

When he reached the outskirts of the town the church-bells were ringing. The sound seemed full of unwonted invitation to Zeph. It was long since he had been inside the walls of a church. In the first years of their married life Rushy had been fond of going to meeting of a Sunday, and he had been only too proud to go with her and see the admiration with which people looked at her handsome face and pretty clothes. Even then were to be seen, if Zeph had only had the wisdom to recognize them, the germs of all the misery and shame which time had since brought. But he looked on with the blinded eyes of a man’s first unreasoning passion, saw nothing wrong, thought no harm, feared no evil. He even shared the pride, which seemed innocent, in the undeniable fact that Rushy was the handsomest woman in the congregation. And now, alas, it was for Rushy’s sake, and because of her beauty, that he was ashamed to look any man in the eye!

A strange desire seized him to go this morning and hear what the preacher had to say. He looked down at his clothes. They were shabby enough, certainly; not at all what he would once have thought it necessary to wear to be decent at church. But Zeph had been down into depths from which all thoughts of trivial considerations had long ago vanished. He smiled half sadly as he turned towards the church door, saying to himself, “I wouldn’t have been caught goin’ to meetin’ in such cloes ’s these once; but I guess it don’t make any difference to nobody but me, ’n’ I feel a real call to hear some hymn-singin’ to-day. It’ll get rid o’ the mornin’, too, quicker ’n any other way. I hain’t got anythin’ to do but wait the day out till she comes home to-night. She won’t be down, I don’t suppose, before dark.” And Zeph slipped in and sat down humbly in one of the side pews nearest the door, which he knew were free to all. It was early. The bells he had heard were the first bells. No one was in the building except the sexton, who was bustling about, giving last touches of dusting to the pulpit Bible. Presently two women entered, bringing, one a large sheaf of white clematis blooms, the other a high vase filled with the feathery tassels of Indian corn and a few of the graceful, tall, sword-like leaves. It was the custom for the women of this congregation to take turns in decorating the church for the Sunday services; and there was much vying among them, and continual exercise of ingenuity, each to outdo the others in effective arrangement of flowers. As they walked up the aisle Zeph’s eyes followed them with astonishment.

“If that ain’t just common field corn, ’s sure’s I’m alive,” he said; “’n’ it’s prettier ’n the flowers be, heaps! Well, I never!” And for the moment he forgot his misery in watching the women dispose their bouquets on the reading-desk and table.

Presently one of them turned briskly and stepped down the aisle to look up at the desk to see if the arrangement could be improved.

“Oh, Lord!” said Zeph. And in the same instant he buried his face in his hands on the back of the seat in front of him. “That’s that Miss Burr I was askin’ after Rushy last night. I don’t want her to see me. She’ll be sure to spry round here askin’ if I’ve found her. She’s dreadful active.” And Zeph remained bowed over, his face hid from view, till he heard their steps leaving the church.

It was indeed Miss Sophy; and as she came down the aisle, her quick eyes catching sight of Zeph’s bowed figure, she said to her companion: “Just look at that man all doubled up there in the poor-pews. I do declare, I think it’s a shame to have any such thing’s poor-pews: it’s a kind o’ badge o’ disgrace to sit there; I’ve known lots ’n’ lots o’ poor folks that wouldn’t set foot ’n ’em, not if they never heard a sermon t’ their dyin’ day, they said. I always feel ashamed when I go by ’em ’n’ shut the door t’ my pew. It’s borne in on me ’tain’t Christian. I think the Catholics are lots better ’n we are about that,—lots. There ain’t anything but poor-pews ’n their churches, ’n’ that’s the way it ought to be,—free to all.”

“How you do talk, Sophy!” replied her companion, good Mrs. Jones. “Why don’t you be a Catholic ’n’ done with it, if you think their way’s so much better ’n ours?”

“I don’t!” retorted Miss Sophy,—“nothin’ o’ the kind. But I say they’ve got the right idea about seatin’ people. No wonder they get all the poor people;—I should think they would. I wouldn’t stir into our church if I couldn’t hire my pew, the way ’tis now; but ’tain’t right, ’n’ ’twon’t last, neither. You’ll see it don’t last. ’Twon’t be a great many years before there’ll be free sittin’s, ’s they call it, in every church ’n America.”

“Well, then there’ll be lots o’ rich people ’ll stay away ’stead o’ the poor people!” retorted Mrs. Jones. “Who wants to sit alongside o’ such a common-looking day-laborer ’s that?” pointing to Zeph.

“He’s clean enough,” replied Miss Sophy, eying Zeph closely as they passed out. “I wouldn’t mind sitting alongside of him. He must be awfully broken down, somehow, to be in here this time o’ day, sittin’ all scrouched into a heap like that. I’ve a good mind to go speak to him.” And she halted.

“Sophy Burr, you come right straight along out this minute!” exclaimed Mrs. Jones, raising her voice indignantly above the decorous whisper in which they had been conversing. “I do believe you’d take all the dead beats ’n this town on your shoulders if you could. You sha’n’t go near the man!” And as Miss Sophy, laughing, allowed herself to be dragged out of the doorway, Zeph lifted his head with a sense of relief and escape.

Just as the congregation stood up for the first singing, the door of the pew where he sat was timidly opened, and a lame old woman, dressed in rusty black, leading a little boy, edged shamefacedly in, glancing with a mute apology in her eyes at Zeph. Sitting down slowly and with difficulty, she motioned to the child to stand; whispering to Zeph, “I’ve got the rheumatiz so’t I can’t keep on my feet.” The child, shy, and unwonted to the place, refused to stand up, and clinging to her skirts began to whimper. Zeph reached out his hand to him, with a smile, and whispered, “You stand up here by me.” The little fellow yielded at once, the old woman looking on wonderingly at his sudden obedience to a stranger. When the singing was over, the child, instead of drawing close to her, nestled up to Zeph, and laid one hand confidingly on his knee. It was a small thing, a very small thing, but it comforted Zeph. Putting his arm round the little chap, he drew him closer, and resting his head comfortably against his shoulder, whispered, “Go to sleep, sonny, if you want to.” The boy looked up with a vague smile, nestled again, and shut his eyes. Zeph hugged him tighter still, stroking his hair, and thinking, “Poor little fellow! He’s got to be a man some day!”

The minister had risen in the pulpit, opened the Bible, and was reading his text.

What words were these, falling on Zeph’s ear? No wonder he started,—started so violently that the child opened his dozing eyes and looked up in alarm at his new friend. An audible exclamation had nearly burst from Zeph’s lips. He gazed at the minister with an emotion very like terror. Was this stranger, this man of whom he had never heard, speaking directly to him, him alone, of all that congregation? Had a message come straight from Heaven to his soul at this crisis in his life? Was it God, and no mere earthly voice, saying these words: “I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven”?

“‘Seventy times seven!’” repeated the preacher. “We have heard it so often that we do not realize what it means; we set it down as a figure of speech and let it go out of our thoughts. And so it was a figure of speech whereby the Master intended to convey to us the great truth that forgiveness is to last as long as offences last,—unto the very end, no matter how long the life, how bitter the offence. Is not that the way God deals with us? Day after day, year after year, have we not been offending Him, breaking His law, slighting His love? We are old, many of us; have we yet ceased to offend? Yet here comes this beautiful sun shining on us, forgiving us anew, this very morning.”

“Just what I was thinkin’ up on the mesa there,” said Zeph to himself, “only I didn’t put it that way.”

“And even if we took the numbers literally,” the preacher went on, “even then, do we live up to it? ‘Seventy times seven:’ four hundred and ninety. Can we look into our hearts, dealing honestly with ourselves, and say we have forgiven, any one of us,—forgiven so many offences as that? Friend, neighbor, husband, wife, how is it? Hast thou been hurt by any one four hundred and ninety times, and four hundred and ninety times forgiven the hurt,—forgiven it, wiped it out?”

It was a homely and realistic putting of the phrase, but it struck home better than a loftier one would have done. Not a pew in which some suddenly remorseful heart, thinking of some one especial offender, did not own, shame-smitten, “No, not so many as that;” and no one more swiftly, remorsefully, than the always gentle Zeph.

“That’s a fact!” he was saying in his thoughts. “’Tain’t been near so many times’s that; an’ I don’t know either ’s I’ve ever once really forgiven her, out ’n’ out, without layin’ it up to make next time harder; ’n’ that ain’t the way the Lord figures it. ’Twould go hard with us ef He did! When Rushy comes home to-night I don’t mean to say ’s much ’s one word t’ her about anythin’, only how glad I am to get her to home again.”

At the end of the sermon the preacher, his whole soul deeply stirred within him by the attempt to hold up in its true light, shape, color, to bring within his people’s real grasp the one eternal talisman,—talisman alike for life and death, for time and eternity, Forgiveness,—paused, and with bent head and trembling voice said, “Shall we dare now to utter the prayer—” He paused again. “Yes. Since the Master gave us the words, we must dare to use them; let us dare now to utter this prayer, ‘Forgive us our trespasses _as_ we forgive those who trespass against us.’”

Sobs were heard throughout the church, and after the benediction the congregation dispersed silently, as from a funeral service. There had indeed been many a grave closed forever in those last few moments,—closed, and a white stone set in token; it had been a moment of inspiration for the preacher, of salvation to the people.

Zeph passed out of the door, the little boy still clinging to his hand and the old woman hobbling by his side. The poor do not stand on ceremony with each other.

“That was drefful good doctrine he preached,” she said tremulously, “but ’t’s pretty hard to live up to. Guess he hain’t had no great crosses hisself.”

“I don’t know about that,” replied Zeph, slowly. “I was a thinkin’ mebbe he had had more ’n common, ’r else he wouldn’t ha’ thought it all out so clear. ’T seemed to me he felt all he was sayin’.”

“There’s things can’t be forgiven!” she said sullenly.

Zeph made no reply. Her words grated on him. The child looked up apprehensively as she pulled him away into another road. “I never see him take so to a stranger,” she said. “Guess ye’ve got children o’ your own.”

“Yes, two,” replied Zeph.

“He’s my grandson,” she said. “All I’ve got left out o’ three boys ’n’ two girls: all dead. But there’s lots o’ things worse ’n death,” she added gloomily. “I’ve lived long enough to know that. Good day t’ ye.” And she turned away.

“‘Lots o’ things worse ’n death,’” repeated Zeph, as he took his lonely road home. “That’s true; ’n’ then again ’tain’t true. While there’s life, there’s hope.” He felt himself strangely cheered and lifted. If forgiveness were so mighty a thing as the preacher had said,—and it must be, since it was all that God had or needed to save the world by,—what more could be needed to straighten out all the tangles of any one little life? He felt his heart full of a larger, better forgiveness towards his wife than he had ever before known; a warmer love than he had felt for many a month.

“There is nothing love cannot do,” the preacher had said. “The thing is, to be sure that the love is truly love, and not selfishness.”

“I know I love Rushy,” thought Zeph, “an’ ’tain’t selfish love, I know ’tain’t! I’d give her up to-day, if I could see any way she’d be better off without me.”

And with his heart full of such thoughts as these he sat down to wait patiently till night for her return.

III.

It was a bitter home-coming,—a bitter return for the forgiving lovingkindness awaiting her.

Tired, more discontented with her home than ever, bearing the baby in her arms, Rushy entered the door, Zephie following, carrying a basket almost heavier than he could lift.

As her eyes fell upon her husband, who went forward to meet her, about to speak words of welcome, she exclaimed testily: “Oh, you’re here, are you! sittin’ round, I s’pose, doin’ nothin’, ever since I went away.”

A hot flush rose in Zeph’s face, but he made a mighty effort to curb his anger, and answered gravely: “No, Rushy, I haven’t been sittin’ much o’ the time these last three days. I’ve been huntin’ you.”

“Well, ye might have spared yourself that trouble,” she rejoined. “If I’d wanted to be found, I could ha’ told ye where I was goin’.”

“Rushy,” exclaimed Zeph, “don’t aggravate me so! I want to live peaceable with ye. I wan’t goin’ to say a word to ye about havin’ been gone all this time; I’ll do anythin’ on God’s earth for ye, Rushy, if ye’ll only stay at home ’n’ live ’s ye’d oughter.”

She turned on him like a fury: “Live ’s I’d oughter! Ye miserable, mean-spirited, no-’count critter! I’ve earned six dollars these three days I’ve been gone; earned it by as hard work ’s ever I did in my life,—six dollars in money, besides stuff enough in the basket there to feed the children ’n’ me for two days more. Have you been earnin’ anything, I’d jest like to know? Have you earned a cent, now, these three days? I say you’re the one that had better live as he’d oughter!” And laying the baby on the bed, she began unpacking the basket of food, and with a triumphant air enumerating the articles as she took them out: “There’s cold turkey and veal, and corn-starch, an’ a can o’ tomatoes, ’n’ tea, ’n’ coffee,—better vittles than there’s been in this house for one whiles.”

Zeph gazed at her in a sort of dumb despair. He had not been prepared for this. Like a strange, far-away sound came into his mind the preacher’s words on which he had been musing so much of the day: “There is nothing that love cannot do if it is true love, and not selfishness.”

“I got a nice steak for supper,” he said. “It’s there on the table.”

She glanced at it contemptuously. “What’s two pounds o’ steak?” she said. “You can keep it for yourself; we’ve got all we want. I’m goin’ down town in the mornin’ into rooms I’ve got there. I sha’n’t live here no longer!”

“Rooms!” gasped Zeph. “Rushy, what do ye mean? Ye ain’t goin’ to leave me for good an’ all! You don’t mean that, Rushy?” And he came towards her with a bound, and putting his hands on her shoulders, looked her in the eyes with an expression which had melted any but a hardened heart. Outraged love, indignation, incredulity, were blended in it; but over and above all, a yearning tenderness, the whole passion of a man’s nature, that could not, would not, surrender the loved object.