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.
“I’ll never let you go, Rushy, never!” he cried. “Ye don’t mean it.
You’ll never go ’n’ shame me ’n’ the children ’n’ yourself that way. You
don’t mean it! Say you don’t mean it, Rushy!” And his voice broke into
almost a sob.
“I do mean it too, Zeph Riker, an’ you’ll see I mean it. I hate the very
sight of you, ’n’ you know it; an’ if you can’t earn a livin’, I can, ’n’
I’m goin’ to; but I ain’t goin’ to earn it for you too. The rooms is
took ’n’ paid for, ’n’ I’m goin’ into ’em to-morrow.”
Zeph buried his face in his hands and was silent. A tempest was raging
within him. A terrible impulse to spring upon his wife and kill her swept
through his veins,—gone in a second; yet it had been there, and Zeph
shuddered as it fled.
Again the far-away refrain sounded in his ears: “There is nothing love
cannot do.”
“Rushy,” he said, “you can’t say I hain’t made a livin’ for us all.”
“A livin’!” she broke in scornfully. “’Tain’t what I call a livin’!” and
she threw a contemptuous glance round the rooms. “A livin’!” she repeated
tauntingly.
“It ain’t what it used to be, I know, Rushy,” said Zeph. “But that ain’t
my fault; you stay at home ’n’ see to things ’s ye used to, ’n’ I’ll have
everything comfortable for ye mighty quick. I’ve been dreadful broke up
this last year, Rushy. You don’t keep count o’ the days I’ve been goin’
round huntin’ you; that’s what’s broke up my work; ’n’ then havin’ to
sell my tools.”
“Yes, I do keep count of ’em, too!” she shrieked; “you needn’t think I
don’t! An’ every time ye come taggin’ on like a fool after me I hate ye
worse; so you can put that ’n your pipe ’n’ smoke it. Perhaps if ye’d let
me alone ’n’ let me come and go like other folks, without spyin’ on me, I
shouldn’t ha’ gone away so often. But I’m goin’ now, an’ goin’ to stay.
This’s the last night ever I’ll sleep ’n this house; you mark my words!”
“What makes ye say ‘like other folks,’ Rushy? You can’t fling it up
against me that I hain’t tried to shelter ye from gettin’ yer name into
folks’s mouths. There ain’t the livin’ man can say he’s ever heard me
open my lips against ye; nobody’s ever heard it from me that you was off;
many ’n’ many’s the time I’ve ’s good ’s lied to keep it covered up.
There isn’t any woman was ever heard of goin’ away from home the way you
do,—leastways, no decent woman,” he muttered in a bitterer tone.
This last expression seemed to subdue instead of increasing her wrath.
She looked at him for a moment reflectively, as if a new idea had struck
her; then her fury broke forth anew: “‘Decent woman,’ eh! Well, I call a
decent man, a man that keeps his family comfortable, and can earn good
wages, and don’t grudge a woman the price of a bonnet, ’n’ ’s got some
pride about him ’n’ ’ll fix up his place, ’n’ not begin a house ’n’ then
let it stand till the timbers rots without so much ’s roofin’ it in.
That’s what I call ‘decent;’ ’n’ I don’t call you anyways decent, ’n’ I
hain’t for a good while, ’n’ I don’t care who knows it. I’m done now!
I’ve stood it ’s long ’s I’m goin’ to. I can take care o’ myself ’n’ the
children, ’n’ I will!”
“I hain’t ever made any objection to your earnin’ money, Rushy,”
persisted Zeph, “any way you could do it here ’t home.”
“How’s anybody to get a thing to do down ’n this Flat?” she replied. “You
don’t suppose anybody’d come down here to board?”
“Are you going to take boarders, Rushy?” said Zeph, the words coming
slowly from his lips. A new horror was seizing him.
“Yes, I am!” she answered defiantly. “There’s more money in that than
anything.”
“What’re you goin’ to do for furniture?”
“The rooms I’ve took is ready furnished,” she answered sullenly.
“And the boarders too?” said Zeph, in a hard voice. “I begin to
understand. Ye’re goin’ in with that Sal Leeson, Rushy.”
“Well, supposin’ I am!” she muttered. “She’s a good friend to me, ’n’
that’s more than any other woman ’n this God-forsaken town’s been!”
“Oh, Rushy, Rushy!” groaned Zeph. “They was all your friends once;
everybody liked you when we first come here, you know they did. An’ if we
was to move away now, ’n’ go somewheres else, an’ begin over again, ye’d
make plenty o’ friends anywheres. Come, Rushy, let’s go. I’ll start with
ye anywheres ye say; we can sell out for money enough to go with. Come,
Rushy!” and he tried to take her hand in his.
She pushed him away roughly, with a brutal laugh. “Zeph Riker,” she said,
“you’re a fool! Hain’t I tried ye? I tell ye I’m done. I won’t never live
with ye any more,—never! I’ve had my mind made up to that for longer ’n
you’ve any idea. I’ve only been waitin’ to see my way clear, ’n’ now I
see it, ’n’ I’m goin’, ’n’ you might ’s well quit makin’ a fuss! I’m
goin’!”
“I forbid ye, Rushy,” said Zeph, solemnly. “I forbid ye! I’m your
husband, ’n’ I forbid ye.”
“Forbid away!” she sneered. “I’m goin’ all the same.”
Zeph left the house. This was a new pass to which things had come. The
tender currents of yearning affection which had been all day setting
warmly towards his wife were fast changing under her wicked and cruel
words to angry and revengeful feeling. He would talk no more with her.
He would go apart by himself and wrestle with this new dilemma. What
it was possible for him to do he did not clearly see. Bitterly he
wondered within himself what a rich man would do in such a dilemma; if
a woman threatening such disgrace to herself and family could be locked
up and guarded like a lunatic; what provision the law made for such
contingencies.
“It’s easy enough for the judge to say, if ’t came into court, that she’s
got to stay ’t home; but that won’t keep her there, ’n’ locks ’n’ bars
wouldn’t either, if she’s made up her mind to go; ’n’ I can’t stay at
home ’n’ watch her, nor pay anybody else for doin’ it either. Lord have
mercy on me, now! I don’t see any way to turn.” And half blinded by these
whirling, miserable thoughts, Zeph went on walking, walking, he knew not
where. At last he turned.
“I’ll go home,” he said. “She sha’n’t have it to say I didn’t stay with
her to-night. Perhaps I can bring her round yet.”
But when he entered the house his first glance showed him that she
had not faltered in her intention, and that the morning would see it
carried out. Two boxes stood in the middle of the kitchen floor locked
and corded. Her own clothes and the children’s had all been taken out
of the closet and drawers. The steak lay untouched on the platter where
he had left it. The basket of provisions she had brought from the camp
was repacked, and a brown paper tied tight over its top. “She don’t even
mean to get breakfast here,” thought Zeph, as he passed through into the
bedroom. The children were in their bed asleep, undressed as usual. Rushy
lay on the outside of the bed, none of her clothes removed, her arm flung
over the little ones with an expression of fierce protection, which smote
Zeph none the less because he could not have analyzed the feeling.
“She needn’t ha’ thought I’d take ’em away from her in their sleep,” he
thought. “What could I do with the baby, anyway, even if I was minded to
steal ’em from her?”
Rushy was asleep and breathing heavily. She had indeed worked hard
and was tired out. As Zeph stood looking down on her face there swept
over him a storm of memories of the early days of their acquaintance,
courtship, and marriage,—days when he was like a man treading in air, so
foolish and fond was he; so blind to everything except her beauty and her
fascinating, bewitching ways. Every reminiscence of these was now but
fuel to the fires that were consuming him.
“There doesn’t anybody know any better ’n I do,” he said, in jealous
anguish, “what ways she’s got o’ takin’ a man off his feet. I don’t
blame any of ’em, not a mite, I don’t, if she makes up her mind to fool
’em. There wasn’t ever the man born could stand out against her!” and he
groaned.
The sound awoke Rushy. Looking up at him angrily, she exclaimed, “Keep
away, can’t ye? Let me alone!”
“I wasn’t going to touch ye, Rushy,” said Zeph; and he crossed the room
and threw himself, without undressing, on the outside of the bed.
Slowly the night wore away, Rushy sleeping heavily, as undisturbed as if
no tragedy brooded over her home; Zeph lying motionless, with wide-open
eyes, asking himself over and over and over again the bootless question,
what he should do. It was like a waking nightmare, the sense of near
catastrophe which weighed on his helplessness.
Once in the night the baby woke and cried hoarsely. Rushy rose, lighted
the lamp, and attended lovingly to the little creature’s wants. As she
was doing so she met Zeph’s steady gaze following her every motion. Her
face hardened instantly into an evil and defiant expression which cut
Zeph to the quick.
“She hates me,” he thought. “That wa’n’t anythin’ less than hate, that
look she had then.” He was glad when she blew out the light, and without
speaking threw herself again on the bed.
The bedroom windows faced the east. At the first ray of light Rushy
sprang up, and rousing the children began dressing them. Zeph sat on the
edge of his bed, watching her silently. He had resolved not to speak
first, to simply bide the issue as she might force it upon him. His
continued silence made her uneasy. From time to time she glanced at him
apprehensively. His quiet, calm look made her anxious. She was not clear
in her own mind what it meant, nor what might be the extent of his power
in the matter. The evil counsellors with whom she had resolved to now
cast in her fortunes had warned her that the law would uphold her husband
in compelling her to remain at home, or in taking the children from her
did he choose to let her go.
“Let him just try it!” she had answered boastfully. “I’d like to see any
man take my children away from me.”
“But it’s the law, Rushy,” Nat Leeson had said. To tell the truth,
infatuated as he was with Rushy, he was by no means unwilling that the
children should be left with their father.
“I don’t care if it’s a hundred laws,” Rushy had made answer. “I tell you
nobody’s goin’ to get my children away from me. I’ll make a good livin’
for ’em, ’n’ no judge is goin’ to take ’em away ’n’ give ’em to Zeph
Riker to take care of! I ain’t a mite afraid.”
But she was; and the longer Zeph’s silence lasted, and the more glances
she stole at his calm, resolute face, the more afraid she grew; and it
was with an almost sinking heart that at last, when she had no longer
any excuse for further delay, she turned to him and said, with a poor
attempt at bravado in her tone, “I’m going now, Zeph.” She was tying her
bonnet-strings as she spoke. Her hands trembled. Zeph saw it.
“Haven’t ye thought better o’ what ye said last night, Rushy?” he asked.
The gentleness of his voice and manner deceived her. It is a piteous
thing to see how, in this life, the gentler and finer organized nature is
always the one to suffer most and come off vanquished in collisions, and
the coarse-grained, brutal one to triumph.
“No, I hain’t!” she cried in a harsh tone. “I’ve thought better ’n’
better of goin’. Ye poor shiftless thing, ye, I donno ’s ye’ve got spirit
enough to take care o’ yourself, let alone taking care of a wife an’
children!”
“Ye know ye’re sayin’ what’s not true, Rushy,” said Zeph, gravely, with
no excitement in his manner. “Ye’re only trumpin’ up things like that to
say to folks to keep ’em from shamin’ ye ’s ye deserve. Ye know you’ve
had a good home with me, ’n’ a man to love ye ’s nobody else ever’ll love
ye, out o’ all these that’s been foolin’ ’n’ tollin’ ye to the devil.”
“You go to the devil yourself then,” cried Rushy, “’n’ don’t sit there
talkin’ to me like a preacher. Look to home! If I was a mind to cast up
at you, I could do it fast enough; but I’ve got too much to do. Come,
Zephie, come with mam! You’ve got to carry the basket, but ’tain’t so
heavy ’s ’twas last night. There’ll be a man here to get the things this
noon,” she added, turning again to Zeph.
He did not heed her. He was gazing at little Zephie. The child stood
looking from his mother to his father, the tears slowly rolling down
his cheeks. He was only ten years old, but he understood too well the
wretched, shameful scene. It was not the first he had witnessed.
“Come on, Zephie,” said his mother, moving towards the door. The boy did
not stir.
Zeph held out his hands to him. “Stay here with pappy,” he said. “Mam’ll
come back perhaps sooner ’n she says. You stay with pappy.” And tears
which all Rushy’s cruelty had failed to wring from Zeph’s eyes fell now
as he drew his boy close and folded him in his arms.
Rushy halted. She was undecided. “Oh, well,” she said, in a hard tone,
affecting to laugh, “Zephie can stay with you if he wants to; he’ll be
glad enough to come to his mammy, though, when he’s hungry. He knows
where ’tis. When you want some o’ mam’s gingerbread, Zephie, you come
down and get it.” And without another look at her husband she left the
house, the baby in her arms.
For some moments Zeph sat like one stunned. He had not really believed
she would do it; or that it would be anything more than her previous
absences. But he realized now that it was different; something had
passed, had gone forever; a new gulf had opened between him and his wife.
He was recalled to himself by little Zephie, who still stood between his
knees, softly crying.
“What makes mam go away?” he sobbed.
The innocent question unnerved Zeph. He too sobbed, and holding the child
convulsively to his breast, cried: “I don’t know, Zephie; something
dreadful’s got into mam. Pappy’s afraid she’s crazy; but perhaps she’ll
come back different.”
“She won’t ever come back,—not into this house,” said the boy. “I heard
her tell Sal so last night.”
“What did Sal say?” asked Zeph.
“She said she’d be just fool enough!” he replied.
So these were the influences under which Rushy had been. He knew it
before, but the child’s artless story seemed to vivify his realization of
it.
“What did mam say when Sal said that?” asked Zeph.
“I don’t know,” said the child; “I didn’t hear her say anything. Nat
said—”
“What did Nat say?” broke in Zeph, so fiercely that the child started.
“Nat said she’d have to come back.”
“He did, did he?” muttered Zeph.
“Zephie,” he continued, “you an’ pappy’ll live together now till mam
comes home. We’ll have some beefsteak now for breakfast, ’n’ then
pappy’ll take you over to Gammer’s to stay while he goes to work; ’n’
you can go to school with Bud; ’n’ to-night pappy’ll get a nice supper.”
“Will you have gingerbread?” asked Zephie.
“Yes,” replied the father, “gingerbread and apples.” And by some
inexplicable mental process the very incongruity between this question
and answer and the depth of misery in his breast moved him to laughter,
and helped him as no other thing just at that moment could have done.
Gammer Stein was “Gammer” to the whole neighborhood. Not a family in all
the Flat, or, as Gammer’s Missourian tongue called it, “Flairt,” but went
to her for sympathy, counsel, help, in the perplexities and troubles of
their hard-working lives. She was the only person with whom Zeph had ever
talked of his troubles with his wife. A great-hearted, tireless, motherly
woman, caring tenderly, through all her poverty, for every one, neighbor
or stranger, poorer than herself; bringing up, in her old age, with the
affectionate patience of a mother, two orphan grandchildren; bearing with
more than wifely, almost with superhuman, good-nature the ill-temper of
a brutal husband, to whom even his seventy years had brought neither
decency nor moderation of passions,—Gammer Stein was one of those
unknown, unnoted saints, whose lives, unwritten in words, are written
in records of influence as ineffaceable, as eternal, as the records of
changes and influences in the solid substance of the earth.
It was not a year after she arrived in town, with the two little
grandsons clinging to her skirts, and calling loudly, unceasingly, from
morning till night, “Gammer, Gammer!” before the whole neighborhood where
she lived had learned to echo the children’s name and the children’s cry;
and it had so nearly passed out of the memory of the place that the old
woman had another name than “Gammer,” that when, as sometimes happened,
a stranger asked her real name, the people had to bethink themselves, to
recall that “Mary,” and not “Gammer,” was the name by which she had been
christened.
Two weeks had passed since Rushy bade her defiant farewell to her
husband. It was again a cloudless summer Sabbath morning, and the hush of
the beneficent rest it had brought brooded over all the working-people’s
homes in the Flat. Even the belated curls of smoke seemed to ascend
lingeringly, as if knowing that on this day there was no hurry about
anything. But there was no curl of smoke going up out of the chimney
of Zeph’s house. More than once Gammer Stein had glanced that way in
neighborly curiosity, and had thought to herself, “Poor fellow! he sleeps
late to-day. It’s well he can.”
As the morning wore on, and still no sign of life came from the house,
her thoughts took a shape of anxiety, and she said to her husband, “I
allow Zeph’s sick. He hain’t stirred yit. Yeow jest go over ’n’ see ef he
wants anythin’.”
“I allow he kin run his sickness hisself,” growled Wilhelm, who was the
antipodes of his wife in every one of the traits which so endeared her to
her neighbors. “I allow I hain’t got no call to go aout nussin’ jest yit.
Yeow kin ef yer want ter. I allow yer fool enough.”
Gammer glanced at him reproachfully. For fifty years she had held her
peace at such replies as this; but this morning, for some reason, her
mild soul was moved to make answer. “Ef yer wuz layin’ sick in yer bed
hyar, ’n’ nobody ter come nigh yer, I allow Zeph’d be ther fust one as
’ud be lookin’ arter yer; I allow he would. He’s all alone thar. The
boy’s ben these two days daown ’t his mother’s. I seed ’twas cuttin’
inter Zeph, the little feller’s goin’ off ter her. I wouldn’t wonder a
mite ef Zeph hed gone killed hisself. He’s sed more ’n once he bleeved
she’d drive him t’ it; ’n’ I see him sharpenin’ a big knife ’n aour
grindstone. Thet wuz last Wednesday; no, ’twuz Toosday. I wuz ironin’,
’n’ sez I, jest careless, ‘What yer sharpenin’ ’t so sharp fur, Zeph?’
’n’ he sez, sez he, ‘I ain’t gwine ter cut my throat, Gammer, yit, never
yeow be afeerd;’ jest ’s ef he seen I wuz thinkin’; ’n’ I sez ter him,
‘Naow, Zeph, ef yeow’ve hed a hell ’n this life, yeow don’t want ter go
right straight inter anuther wuss one, dew yer? An’ I allow ef yer go ’n’
murder yeourself, ye’ll jest go right straight inter torment thar won’t
be no gettin’ shet of, never!’ I jest spoke plain ter him.”
“I sh’d think ser,” growled Wilhelm; “allers a meddlin’ in business
’tain’t any o’ yeourn. I allow ’tain’t nothin’ ter yeow ef Zeph Riker
cuts his throat ef he wants ter.”
“I allow ’tis,” continued Gammer, placidly; “I allow he’s my brother,
accordin’ to Scriptur’; thar ain’t nobody gwine to kill hisself thet I
knows on, ef I kin hender him.”
The words had hardly passed her lips, when a sharp cry, “Gammer, Gammer!”
came from the front of the house. Both Gammer and Wilhelm sprang to their
feet.
“That’s Zephie,” exclaimed Gammer, as she ran to the door. Little Zephie
was running by at the top of his speed. As he passed, he shrieked, “Nat’s
cut pappy all ter pieces! He’s bleedin’! The men’s bringin’ him.”
Horror-stricken, Gammer followed the child, and overtook him as he was
vainly trying with his trembling little fingers to fit the key into the
door.
“Oh, hurry, hurry!” he cried. “Oh, Gammer, get the door open! Pappy told
me to run ’n’ git his bed ready.”
“He’s alive, then?” gasped Gammer.
“Yes, he’s alive,” sobbed Zephie, “but he’s bleedin’; his face’s all
cut. Oh, Gammer, Gammer, when I’m a man I’ll kill Nat!”
“Hush, child! naow don’t yeow talk thet way; tew killin’s is wuss ’n
one! It’s all murder,” said Gammer, moving about the rooms distractedly,
hardly knowing what she did, as she heard the steady tramp of men’s feet
nearing the house.
It was a ghastly burden they brought, a ghastly story they had to tell.
After they had made the wounded man as comfortable as it was possible to
make him with the scanty accommodations at hand, the doctor drew Gammer
aside and told her the tale.
It seemed that Zeph, poor fellow, had not been able to keep away from
the house where his wife was living. Not only did he yearn for the sight
of her face and the baby’s, but he had a foolish notion that his being
occasionally seen there would be a shelter to her reputation. He had
even said, with incredible magnanimity, to Sal Leeson, who reluctantly
bore that much of testimony to his goodness, “It’s all against my will,
Rushy’s bein’ here; but so long’s she’s my wife, ’n’ ’s got my children
along with her, it’s better for all round that I should be here some o’
the time, whether she wants me or not!”
The evil-doers, men and women, who consorted in the place, had been more
than once shamed and sobered and finally driven out of Rushy’s room by
the sight of the silent, sad-faced man whose name she had so dishonored.
It was incredible that he could have borne it. But he did; and it had
become evident that if Rushy was insensible to his presence, others were
not, and a new feeling of respect and sympathy for Zeph had arisen, even
in the minds of those previously most hostile to him. Nat himself had
been sometimes shamed into withdrawing from the stern, silent gaze of
the injured husband. Encouraged by these signs that the man was not
wholly insensible to disgrace, Zeph had resolved to make one effort to
reason with him, and had timed this remonstrance unluckily, addressing
him when he was sufficiently under the influence of liquor to be savagely
irritable. It was late on Saturday evening. As Nat entered Rushy’s
kitchen with the easy familiarity of one privileged, Zeph, who had been
waiting for him to come in, rose, and said, “Nat, I owe all my troubles
with my wife to you. If it wasn’t for you—”
He did not finish the sentence. Seizing a carving-knife which lay on the
table, Nat sprang on him like a tiger. Zeph, wholly unarmed, caught up a
chair to ward off the blows, and one swift, terrible second saw the two
men wrestling in a life-and-death fight. Stretched from one corner to the
other of the room was a line on which Rushy had towels and small articles
hung airing after the wash. The chair with which Zeph was hitting out
blindly caught in this line, throwing him to the floor; and that was
the last he knew till, coming vaguely to his senses, he heard voices
above him: one, his wife’s, angry, hard,—how it smote him!—“I tell you he
sha’n’t stay here! I’ve left him! I won’t have him laid on that bed! He’s
no business here, any way!”
Zeph opened his eyes. Opposite him was Nat, raging, swearing, held firm
by two policemen, who were dragging him out of the room.
“Why didn’t ye let me alone till I’d finished my job?” he bellowed, like
a wild beast in his fury, Rushy, one hand on his arm, one on his mouth,
vainly striving to check him from incriminating himself further.
Zeph closed his eyes at the harrowing sight. Yes; why had they not let
Nat finish his job! How much better it would have been! What a release
from misery!
Then he heard a voice saying angrily to Rushy,—it was the doctor,—“I
don’t care who he is or what he is, he has got to be laid on that bed, I
tell you! Are you a woman, or a devil? Stand out of the way!” And then
Zeph felt himself lifted and borne, and a buzz of murmuring voices, and
sharp stinging pains in his cheek and throat; and then he sank away and
knew no more until in the night, when he waked again to himself, and all
was still, no sound except the loud ticking of a clock; and some man
sitting by him, a stranger, said in a not unkind voice, “Hey! ’wake, are
ye? Want anything?” and Zeph had said feebly, “Water,” and had tried
to ask for Rushy, but the words would not form themselves; and while
he was struggling to speak them, he floated off, he thought, on a big
white cloud, and the air was full of the sound of bells ringing, and he
remembered that it must be Sunday, and opened his eyes again, and saw the
broad daylight streaming into the room, and the doctor standing in the
doorway, and men’s heads rising one behind the other, and the doctor’s
voice again, angry and indignant, reasoning with Rushy. Could those tones
be Rushy’s, and those cruel words? Yes, it was Rushy, saying in a shrill
voice, “I don’t care! I tell ye I won’t have him here. He’s brought me
trouble enough a’ready; an’ now he’s got Nat into prison, ’n’ I don’t
care what becomes of him. ’Twas all his fault. He begun the fight,
aggravatin’ Nat. Nat never spoke the first word.”
And above all the confused and struggling sounds of the excited voices
still pealed on the church-bells; and at the sound Zeph’s brain seemed
suddenly to clear itself, and strength to come back to him; and half
raising himself in the bed, he spoke aloud: “Say, doctor, let them carry
me home; I’d rather go. ’T’won’t hurt me. I ain’t very bad hurt, am I?”
A hush fell on the group of excited talkers. They had thought him asleep.
“No, you’re not very bad hurt,” said the doctor, coming to the bedside
and feeling his pulse. “I don’t suppose it’ll do you any hurt to be
carried over to your house. But you’ve got an ugly cut in your face, came
mighty near being your throat, and it’ll need watching for a few days,
two weeks maybe. You’ve got to be tended pretty close. You can’t be left
all alone in the house.” And the doctor glanced wrathfully at Rushy, who
stood silent, sullen, looking down on the floor.
“I’ll manage that, doctor,” said Zeph, cheerfully, “if you’ll just get me
home. My boy’ll go with me, I guess; he’s there ’most o’ the time. I’ll
have to keep him out of school a few days, but after that I’ll do for
myself. I’ve got good neighbors out there.”
All this time Rushy spoke no word, but her face grew harder and darker
with every syllable that fell from her husband’s lips. She saw how his
words were telling against her. Even her evil comrade, Sal Leeson, bent
almost compassionately over the bed and wiped Zeph’s forehead as he spoke.
“I say, Rushy,” she muttered, “you might let him stay just a few days;
I’ll look after him.”
Before Rushy could reply, Zeph cried out, “No, no! I tell you I won’t
stay. Doctor, it ’ud kill me to stay,” he continued pleadingly. “Oh, get
me out o’ here ’s quick ’s you can!”
They were all rough men who were standing there ready to give what help
might be in their power, but there was not a man among them whose pulses
did not beat quicker at this cry of Zeph’s. They lifted him in their arms
tenderly, as if he had been a helpless woman, and many a resentful glance
was shot back at the unfeeling wife, who neither moved nor spoke as her
husband was borne out of the house.
“Good-by, Rushy,” he said. “I’m awful sorry to have got ye into this
trouble. But ye know ’twan’t any o’ my doin’, Rushy. Ye know ’twan’t. Say
good-by to me, Rushy. P’raps I’ll never see ye again.”
“Good-by,” she said sullenly, without looking up. In league and fast
bound with malignant spirits, surely, must Rushy Riker’s heart have been,
to have resisted the appeal of that moment. Even Sal Leeson was crying;
but Rushy’s eyes glittered hard and dry with an evil light. Her guilty
and passionate heart was full of terror for Nat. She had overheard one of
the policemen say, as they dragged him off after the fray, “You’ll swing
for this night’s work, Nat Leeson;” and Nat, frantic in his fury, had
replied, “Swing and be damned! If you’d let me alone a minute longer, I’d
have finished him!”
Rushy knew only too well that if Zeph was to die of his hurts, these
reckless words of Nat’s would carry terrible weight against him in the
trial for murder which must follow. Her whole nature was on fire with
apprehensions, wild and bootless plottings and plannings, and over and
above all raged an unreasoning anger against her husband for having been
the occasion of such danger to Nat.
“If worst comes to worst, I’ll swear him out myself,” said the wretched
woman. “I’ll swear Zeph set on him with the knife first. ’Twas just the
same’s a knife, the words he used. They just made Nat crazy.”
The jail was in full sight from her door: a square, stone building with
grated windows, at the back a high fence surrounding an enclosure in
which a man had been hung only a few months previous,—hung for a murder
committed in a sudden fray not unlike this one between her husband and
Nat. As Rushy recalled the day of this hanging and the crowd of men and
women she had seen outside the fence eagerly striving, like wild beasts
athirst for blood, to look through cracks in the fence, to climb up and
see over, her heart sickened within her; clenching her fist, she shook it
toward the jail and muttered: “They sha’n’t ever hang Nat. I’ll burn the
place down over their heads first. If ’tis stone I’ll fire it somehow, or
I’ll get him poison! They sha’n’t hang him!”
The church in which Zeph had listened two weeks before to the sermon on
forgiveness stood only a few rods from Rushy’s house. As the men were
carrying him past the door the choir had just begun the singing of the
first hymn.
“Stop a minute, can’t ye?” whispered Zeph. “It jars me awful, bein’
carried; just rest a minute here ’n this shade.” He would not confess
that it was for sake of the singing that he wished to stop. With closed
eyes he lay listening. He could not hear the words, but the tune was
one of the sweet old-fashioned ones he had heard sung when he was a
child; and there were words echoing in his thoughts which seemed to fit
strangely into its rhythm,—words echoing yet in the air, though it was
now fourteen days since their syllables had been spoken: “Yea, I say unto
you, until seventy times seven.”
“I don’t know what’s got into me,” thought Zeph, “to be so haunted like
by them words. I don’t lay no claim to bein’ a Christian, ’n’ I’d just as
soon kill that Nat this minute ’s I would a pizen snake; but I can’t get
free from them words.”