the office into the parlor; he was not conscious that he walked on tiptoe
or that he moved the arm-chair softly as if to avoid making a noise.
He sank back into the great leather depths and stared dully about him.
“They’ve called my bluff!” he whispered; “there isn’t anything left I can
do.” He could not remember that he had ever been in a similar situation,
because, although he had had many a buffet and some hard falls from life,
never had he been at the end of his devices or his obstinate courage. But
now there was nothing, nothing to be done.
“By-and-by I will go and tell Sol,” he thought, in a dull way. No; he
would let him hope a little longer; the morning would be time enough....
He looked down at his own hands, and a shudder contracted the muscles of
his neck, and his teeth met.
“Brace up, you coward!” he adjured himself; but the pith was gone out of
his will. That which he had thought, looking at his hands, was that _she_
would never want to touch them again. Amos’s love was very humble. He
knew that Ruth did not love him. Why should she? Like all true lovers in
the dawn of the New Day, he was absorbed in his gratitude to her for the
power to love. There is nothing so beautiful, so exciting, so infinitely
interesting, as to love. To be loved is a pale experience beside it,
being, indeed, but the mirror to love, without which love may never find
its beauty, yet holding, of its own right, neither beauty nor charm. Amos
had accepted Ruth’s kindness, her sympathy, her goodness, as he accepted
the way her little white teeth shone in her smile, and the lovely depths
of her eyes, and the crisp melody of her voice—as windfalls of happiness,
his by kind chance or her goodness, not for any merit of his own. He was
grateful, and he did not presume; he had only come so far as to wonder
whether he ever would dare—But now he only asked to be her friend and
servant. But to have her shrink from him, to have his presence odious to
her ... he did not know how to bear it! And there was no way out. Not
only the State held him, the wish of the helpless, trusting creature
that he had failed to save was stronger than any law of man. He thought
of Mrs. Raker and her foolish schemes: that woman didn’t understand how
a man felt. But all of a sudden he found himself getting up and going
quickly to his father’s picture; and he was saying out loud to the
painted soldier: “I know my duty! I know my duty!” Without, the snow was
driving against the window-pane; that accursed Thing creaked and swayed
under the flail of the wind, but kept its stature. Within, the tumult
and combat in a human soul was so fierce that only at long intervals did
the storm beat its way to his consciousness. Once, stopping his walk, he
listened and heard sobs, and a gentle old voice that he knew in a solemn,
familiar monotony of tone; and he was aware that the women were in the
other room weeping and praying. And up-stairs Sol, who had never done a
mean trick in his life, and been content with so little, and tried to
share all he got, was waiting for the sweetheart who never could come,
turning that pitiful smile of his to the door every time the wind rattled
it, “trying to hope!”
He had not shed a tear for his own misery, but now he leaned his arm on
the frame of his mother’s portrait and sobbed. He was standing thus when
Ruth saw him, when she flashed up to him, cold and wet and radiant.
She was too breathless to speak; but she did not need to speak.
“You’ve got it, Ruth!” he cried. “O God, you’ve got the reprieve!”
“Yes, I have, Amos; here it is. I couldn’t telegraph because the wires
were down, but the Governor and the railroad superintendent fixed it
so we could come on an engine. I knew you were suffering. Elly is with
Mother Smith and Mrs. Raker, but I—but I wanted to come to you.”
If he had thought once of himself he must have heard the new note in her
voice. But he did not think once of himself; he could only think of Sol.
“But the Governor, didn’t he refuse to see you?” said he.
“No; he refused to see poor Mr. Dennison.” Ruth used the slighting pity
of the successful. “_We_ didn’t try to go to him; we went to his wife.”
Amos sat down. “Ruth,” he said, solemnly, “you haven’t got talent, you’ve
got genius!”
“Why, of course,” said Ruth, “he might snub _us_ and not listen to us,
but he would _have_ to listen to his wife. She is such a pretty lady,
Amos, and so kind. We had a little bit of trouble seeing her at first,
because the girl (who was all dressed up, like the pictures, in a black
dress and white collar and cuffs and the nicest long apron), she said
that we couldn’t come in, the Governor’s wife was engaged, and they were
going out of town that day. But when Elly began to talk to her she
sympathized at once, and she got the Governor’s wife down. Then I told
her all about Sol and how good he was, and I cried and Elly cried and
_she_ cried—we all cried—and she said that I should see the Governor, and
gave us tea. She was as kind as possible. And when the Governor came I
told him everything about Sol—about his mother and the little boy at the
mill and the dog, and how he saved the other boy, pulling out that big
iron bar red-hot—”
“But,” interrupted Amos, who would have been literal on his
death-bed—“but it wasn’t a very big bar. Not the bar they begin with—a
finished bar, just ready for the shears.”
“Never mind; it was big when I told it, and I assure you it impressed the
Governor. He got up and walked the floor, and then Elly threw herself
on her knees before him; and he pulled her up, and, don’t you know, not
exactly laughed, but something like it. ‘I can’t make out,’ said he,
‘from your description much about the guilt or innocence of Solomon
Joscelyn, but one thing is plain, that he is too good a fellow to be
hanged!’”
“And did you take the dagger I sent, and my telegram?”
“Your telegram? Dagger? Amos, I’m so sorry, but we didn’t go back to
our lodgings at all. We had our bags with us, and came right from the
Governor’s here!”
“Then you didn’t say anything about evidence?”
“Evidence?” Ruth looked distressed. “Oh, Amos! I forgot all about it!”
Amos always supposed that he must have been beside himself, for he
caught her hand and kissed it, and cried, “You darling!” Nothing more,
not a word; and he went abjectly down on his knees before her chair and
apologized, until, frightened by her silence, he looked up—and saw Ruth’s
eyes.
* * * * *
After all, the evidence was not at all wasted; for the Italian woman,
thanks to a cunning use of the dagger, made a full confession; and, the
public wrath having been sated on Sol, a more merciful jury sent the real
assassin to a lunatic asylum, which pleased Amos, who was not certain
whether he had not stepped from one hot box into another. Ruth told Amos,
when he asked her the inevitable question of the lover, “I don’t know
when exactly, dear, but I think I began to love you when I saw you cry;
and I was _sure_ of it when I found I could help you!”
Honest Amos did not analyze his wife’s heart; he was content to accept
her affection as the gift of God and her, and his gratitude included Sol
and Elly; wherefore it comes to pass that a certain iron-worker, on a
certain day in December, always dines with Amos Wickliff, his wife, and
Mother Smith. Amos is no longer sheriff, but a citizen of substance and
of higher office, and they live in what Mother Smith fears is almost
sinful luxury; and on this day there will be served a dinner yielding not
to Christmas itself in state; and after dinner the rougher will rise, his
wineglass in hand. “To our wives!” he will say, solemnly.
And Amos, as solemnly, will repeat the toast: “To our wives! Thank God!”
THE END