Roxy

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51. Salvation By Hook And By Crook



" Father Mtley," the old Methodist minister, " superarm nated " and living in the town, visited Roxy every day. There was nothing to offer but commonplace consolations and exhortations, but the old man's gentle worda of sympathy and his pathetic prayers did her good while he was with her. Twonnet thought that Whittaker strained his delicacy too far in keeping away so long. She told Roxy something of Whittaker's visit to Mark. And Roxy set herself to wondering also why Mr. Whittaker had not come. But besides his fear of reproach if he should hasten his visit, he was afraid of saying prematurely what he had to say. He sent her some word of friendly sympathy by Twonnet each day. But it was quite possible to one of his cool and reserved temperament to wait till his counsel should be needed.

Roxy had the hardest time of all, in that she had nothing to do. Bonamy, in all his distress, busied himself in settling his business. There was one purpose clearly fixed in his mind, lie meant to leave Luzerne. Whether to go by steamboat or by suicide he had not decided, but ho was resolved to flee from surroundings that were hateful to him. The embarrassment lav in arranging his affairs bo as to provide for the wife who would accept no provision, and to settle also in an honorable way his obliga tions to the unreasonable and vindictive Nancy.

Nancy's father, moved by some reviving parental affection, possibly also by some prospect of getting something from Mark, took her back to Rocky Fork, where at least ehe was free from the taunts of Haz Kirtley's wife, and where she could shut herself in from the sight of her doriding acquaintances. McGowan, too, became a little more peaceable now that Nancy was at home. He postponed his revenge, but did not give it up.

All the day following that of Roxy's desertion of Mark'a house, she tried in vain to interest herself in some occupation. She went down to the sitting-room with its long clock and its bright rag-carpet, its homely old-fashioned pictures and the window where the honeysuckles grew. She tried as of old to arrange things, but she sank at once into listlessness and fell to looking out of the window at the hills and the sky. Then she asked Jemima for some sewing. But she did not take ten stitches. Her hands lay idle in her lap and she sat for half an hour at a time without making any motion, except to sigh heavily. One cannot take up an old life where it was left off. Roxy was not the same Roxy. The whole memory of what had intervened and the change in her very nature wrought by it rendered the old life impossible. She could never more be a young Saint Theresa, romantically longing for martvrdom : she was a full-grown woman with large and sorrowful experience. The girl may be developed into the woman the woman cannot be repressed into the girl again. It is the inevitable law of all progression in character and experience. The sun will never return a single degree on the dial of Ahaz, for all our praying and turning of our faces to the wall. In this motionless despondency passed the two days following Roxy's return to her father's house. Friends enough came to see her. Most of them volunteered approval of her course in leaving her husband, and this approval for some reason always hurt her Some of them angered her by advising a divorce, even assuring her that she should insist on her share of the property. And some who were theologically inclined, told her on the authority of certain preachers and commentators that if she had remained with her husband she would have committed a crime herself. From her aver sion to this sort of consolation it came that her hours with her friends were even more intolerable than the time of loneliness and listless inactivity. She wished, like the much be-comforted man in the land of Uz, for a surcease of sympathy.

On the third day, which was Saturday, she became restless. She told her father that she ought to do something. The old eagerness for a definite purpose largo enough to tax her energies awakened.

Adams grew uneasy as he saw this restlessness, and went on his own account to ask Whittaker to come and advise her.

" I thought you would have come before," said Roxy, when she saw him.

"Perhaps I ought to have come, but I thought however much you might suffer, you needed the services of a minister least of all. I went especially to the weak and the guilty. I waited until you wanted me. I thought y >u would rouse yourself after awhile, and then maybe I could do some good in coming."

" Mr. Whittaker, I want to do something. I shall go mad, if I sit here long and think."

" Of course you must do something. That is natural to you, and it's good that you've come to tuat so scon. It ia a healthy sign."

"What can I do ? I cannot interest myself in anything."

" You must work for somebody else. That is your remedy."

"But I don't know anybody that is in trouble. Do you ? "

Whittaker was silent for a long time. Then he said, deliberately :

" I only know two people besides yourself in great trouble. You know them."

Roxy colored, and shuddered a little. She tried to understand what this word might signify. It was only after some effort that she could speak.

" You know I can't help them."

" I don't see how you can, myself. I half hoped that you could see some way. But if you don't see any, I suppose there is none."

Roxy was about to resent the intimation that she ought to do anything for Mark or Nancy ; but something in Whittaker's words impressed her. The habit of conscientious and self-denying action made her mind receptive to any suggestion of difficult duty, and there was comfort in Whittaker's deferential confidence in her.

" Do you think I did wrong, then, to come away ? I couldn't stay."

" You did just what I should expect of you. I couldn't say more. Twonnet told you, I suppose, that Mark rode hard that day to get home and tell you himself. He was too late, and he deserved all he has suffered. He knows that, and respects even admires your course."

" But you don't think I ought to go back."

" I don't think your husband has the slightest cairn on you. I only say that I do not see anything but evil in this business, unless you see some way to turn it to good."

" But why am I bound to do anything ? I haven't done the evil."

" Only because you are the innocent one, and the strong one. But I don't want you to think that I say you are bound to do anything. I don't think you are. I am not sure you can do anything. I cannot see at all further than I have said. I'm sure you'll do whatever you find to do, and you have done all one could demand. If there is anything else you cau do, it is a matter of privilege, rather than of duty. The highest actions are of that kind."

" I'm afraid you've added to my trouble," she said, as Whittaker rose to go. " But it is very good of you to have so much confidence in me, though it is of no use. I shall never go back to Mark, and I don't see what I can do for him."

" I do not think of any advice I can give. Do not feel any ought about anything. Be as quiet as you can over Sunday. Then, if you feel that you might be helped by any advice of mine on Monday, I will come again. But do not trust my judgment; do not let anybody dictate. Follow the impulse of your own sense of what you can and ought to do. That is the only guide in a case like this." Then, suddenly dropping for an instant his reserve, he took her offered hand, and said, with much feeling : " And God help you, my poor, dear, good friend, and give you peace."

It was the first word of sympathy Roxy had received that touchel the great deep of sorrow in her heart. The unexpectedness of the tone, from one so quiet and shy as Whittaker, the instantaneous revelation of intense sympathy, produced a quick reaction in her mood ; and when he was gone, she buried her face in her hands, and wept tears that were medicine to her spirit.

With the tears came also, by degrees, the clearer vision that Whittaker looked for. The source of his wise prescience of the action of Roxy's moral nature is not far to seek. A man of high conscience is able to forecast something of the movements of one whose moral orbit is nearly in the same plane. For himself, this whole affair had come so close to him, that it produced a powerful awakening. The half-finished sermon on the subject of " Salvation by Faith Only," on which he had been writing, seemed to him uninteresting. The metaphysics of salvation are not of so much consequence, when one is engaged in the practice of actually saving men. He felt rising in him the rebellion of the practical man against the theoretical, and, had he given expression to his real feelings, he would have discoursed perhaps on "Salvation by Hook or by Crook," so important did it seem to him to save men by any rope or pole that would reach them, rather than to stand philosophizing about it, after the manner of a Reformer or a Church Father of seventy-four guns. He could not preach the sermon ; it was like pine shavings in his mouth. It was now too late to write another. He went into the pulpit on Sunday morning, and read the story of the woman that wept on the feet of Jesus in the house of Simon the Respectable, and then he read the parable of the two debtors, spoken to this Deacon Simon Pharisee. It was not a sermon but something better, living words out of the living heart of a man. He tried not to be personal, but Highbury made up his mind that this kind of talking was not suitable to a decorous church, and that he must see that Whittaker's relation with the church In Luzerne should be dissolved. A man who, instead of denouncing the Pharisees, those people; that hated and killed Christ, should venture to intimate that there were Pharisees nowadays even in churches of his own denomination, was not to be endured. There is no safe ground for a good sound preacher, but to attack ancient wickedness and the sins and superstitions of foreign countries. If he must come closer home, there are denominations rival to his own, that need scathing. But somehow the people in Whittaker's little congregation were very much moved by this sermon, and from that time the church began to fill up, and who does not know that full pews hide heresies ?

But that Sunday was no day of rest for Roxy. When Whittaker had suggested that Roxy might do something to help the guilty ones, it was only with a vague notion that any act of forgiveness would do good. He was sincere when he said that he could not see what she could do. It was only his blind faith in the power of Roxy's enthusiasm and high moral aspiration that had awakened this indefinite hope. And all this Sunday long, the old martyr spirit of Roxy's girlhood had been coming back. It was not Texas, now. Why should she, who had always sighed to dare great things and to make great sacrifices, why should she not now put down her just pride and anger, and, bv the sacrifice, save those who had crucified her ? Every great possibility is a challenge to an ambitious spirit. She had wanted an extraordinary field, and had dreamed romantic dreams of suffering for Christ. And now Texas had come to her very door !

All that Sunday forenoon Twonnet did not come. Roxy mist talk to somebody. She told her step-mother first that she was thinking whether she ought not go back ta Mark and help him to do better. Mrs. Adams was surprised, but she only answered " Very likely," which meaningless response irritated Roxy. Jemima thought for her part that men were not to be trusted anyways. There was Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold and George the Third, to say nothing of John Tyler, at that very time a " renegade president." And Roxy's father denounced bitterly a plan that he had dreaded from the beginning Elder Highbury, to make some atonement for having refused to see Nancy Kirtley, condescended to call on Roxy Bonamy this Sunday afternoon, the store being closed and there being nothing else to do. He assured her that she had done right in leaving, and he hoped she would never go back, because it was the opinion of many good preachers whom he cited that to return to a faithless husband or wife was a great sin. The Methodist class-leader expressed similar views. These opinions from those who did not know that she was meditating such a step staggered and confounded the scrupulous Roxy.

But Mrs. Hanks put the finishing blow to her plan. For she came also, as in duty bound, and she told Roxy confidentially that she thought it very wise not to begin suit for a divorce. Roxy could get her share of the property. But it was better to be forgiving. Mark was a good sort of a fellow, anyhow. A great many women had to forgive such things. A body had to put up with something. Mark was well off and very smart, and if Roxy should go back, why, all the property would be hers, and besides, you know, grass widows are not much thought of.

This logic of laxity and pity of the devil made Roxy hate her half -formed purpose to return. It would seem to such people as her aunt to be a purely selfish one. And Mrs. Hanks had made it seem so bad to Roxy that she surrendered the thought of returning to her husband.

She had tried the cage of circumstance, and the bara wounded her but would not yield to all her beating. She sank back again into listless despair. She did not talk, she only sighed,

When darkness came, the father went out to take the air, and the step-mother went to meeting. There were no longer any visitors in the house, and Roxy sat in the old fcitting-room with her hands crossed in her lap in a hopelessness that had no ray of light in it. The room was the same as in the years before, but she who had dreamed there of high achievement was now a broken-hearted prisoner of evil circumstance. It seemed to her that the old clock would kill her. It was so long in swinging from one tick to another. What eternities seconds come to be when one sits with hands crossed, the despairing palms upward, sits thus and sighs with no hope in life but to sit thus and sigh ! The " forever never " of the clock was to Roxy a forever of perdition and a never of hope. Jemima fell into a slumber, while Roxy continued to watch the slow-beating and awful clock.

Since there was no hope of any great change in Roxy's life, she looked eagerly for small and unimportant interruptions of her sorrow. She wished that her father would come back, or that Mrs. Rachel would return from church. In thus wishing she slowly turned her head toward the front window. It was the very honeysuckle-covered window into which her lover had looked on that day that he brought her the delusive good news.

She turned her eyes in a purposeless way to this window. She quickly pressed her hands across her heart and gasped for breath. There, framed in the darkness of the clouded night, was the face of Mark.

It was close against the window pane, the eager eyes were fastened on her. In an instant more the face had disappeared.

Roxy screamed and fell fainting on the floor. Jemima ran to her assistance. And when later Roxy explained to the family that she had seen Mark's face at the window, they were sure that it was an illusion of her fancy. For besides the improbability of it, Jemima was facing the window all the time and had seen nothing at all.

But in that one view of the face, Roxy read all the torture that Mark had endured. Contrasted as it was in her mind with the old memory of the happy and hopeful Mark of the missionary days, looking into that very window, it was a vivid picture of hopeless wretchedness. All the mighty pity of her nature was roused. There must be something she could do to draw this wrecked husband of hers out of his living perdition. That long sleepless night she lay and planned, and waited for the morning that she might advise and execute.