Forgiving

by LaVyrle Spencer

  “Merry Christmas.”

  The rims of the cups clinked. After he drank he glanced over the crowd while drying the bottom fringe of his mustache with the edge of an index finger. He caught her watching him and she looked away.

  He leaned close enough to be heard. “Looks like you’ll get your church and school building after all.”

  “I hope so.”

  “How much do you think they collected?”

  “I couldn’t even guess.”

  Emma appeared with her brood. “Time we were getting home. Have you seen Byron?”

  “He’s over there.” Sarah pointed.

  “Go get your father, Josh. Tell him we’re ready to go. Marshal, Merry Christmas.”

  “Same to you.”

  “Sarah, we’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  “Yes.”

  “Dinner will be ready at four.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  When they’d gone off, Noah said, “You’re spending tomorrow with them?”

  “Yes. You didn’t believe me, did you?”

  He shrugged and looked down at his cup.

  She kept thinking about missing the chance to go out to the Spearfish with him. When she spoke, her voice held passionate disappointment. “Why didn’t you ask me earlier?”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d want to.”

  “But you could have asked, Noah.”

  “You haven’t called me Noah since the night I kissed you.”

  “I’ve been very mixed up.”

  His unsmiling eyes took hers and kept them. “You don’t make it easy on a man, Sarah.”

  “I know,” she replied meekly. “I’m sorry.”

  He seemed to consider awhile, then he set down his cup, and his face took on a look of remoteness. “Well, I have to get an early start in the morning.”

  “Yes, I suppose you do.” She set hers down, too, while he glanced off across the room and made no move to leave, obviously troubled.

  They both spoke at once.

  “Sarah—”

  “Noah—”

  In the silence that followed, with their eyes locked, she took courage.

  “Could we walk home together?” she asked.

  “Where’s your coat?”

  “In one of the dressing rooms backstage.”

  “Did you wear a hat?”

  “No.”

  “Stay here,” he said, leaving her. She waited despondently while he disappeared, thinking this was one of the more difficult struggles with which she’d ever dealt, developing feelings for a man she felt obligated to shy away from. The missed opportunity to spend Christmas with him and his family crushed her, took all the joy out of her plans for tomorrow. He knew her well enough to recognize her coat in a jumble; it seemed significant that they’d spent that much time becoming friends. So what did she want of him? Of herself? Alas, she did not know.

  He returned with her coat, held it While she slipped it on, then guided her toward the door, both of them wishing and being wished Merry Christmas several times on their way.

  Outside others were walking home. At the hitching rails the blankets and saddles on the animals were covered with snow. Two mules plodded up the street bearing riders who called out holiday greetings in the dark.

  Sarah and Noah replied in unison, Noah raising one hand. In silence they traversed the boardwalks—up one set of steps, down another, across a street, up steps again. Occasionally their elbows brushed but they did not speak. At a corner they turned onto a side street and began climbing the steep hill.

  Suddenly, in the still night, a musical note sounded, stopping their footsteps.

  “What was that?”

  It came again and they lifted their faces to the night sky.

  “The chimes,” she breathed.

  From somewhere up high above the gulch the notes struck and reverberated, bouncing from wall to wall, down the chasm, shimmering up their spines.

  “It must be Ned Judd. He’s playing ‘Adeste Fideles,’” Sarah whispered.

  They stood in place and listened as each note echoed and re-echoed. The night came alive with music that seemed to have an almost celestial splendor as it resounded through the wondrous acoustical chamber around them. It filled their ears and seemed to skitter out the tops of their heads while, enraptured, they held still.

  When the song ended, Noah said, “Where do you suppose he is?”

  “On one of the ledges. He must have carried the triangles up there. What a Christmas gift for us all.”

  Another song began. “Away in a Manger.”

  Noah found one of Sarah’s hands and tucked it tightly beneath his elbow. They turned and continued toward home, bound once again by music. On the top landing at Mrs. Roundtree’s, she and some of her boarders stood with their faces lifted, listening too, as the carol seemed to emanate from the rocks, the pines, the very heavens themselves. Noah discreetly released Sarah’s hand and they climbed the stairs and joined the others, elevating their faces, too.

  The song ended and a mutual sigh rose, like that following a burst of fireworks.

  “For a Christmas that started out to be the loneliest one a lot of us has ever faced, it sure turned into something special,” Mrs. Roundtree said.

  A murmur of voices concurred.

  “Thanks to Mr. Poinsett’s triangles.”

  “And Mr. Judd’s playing.”

  They mingled awhile, remarking on the pageant, the children’s choir, the angel wings, complimenting Sarah on her part. The heavenly concert continued, but in time they tired and drifted inside, bidding one another goodnight as they shuffled upstairs, moving like a slow tide, each to his own door. In the sluggish current of night-going, Sarah lost Noah without a private farewell—a disappointment—surrounded as they were by others.

  In her room she undressed in the dark, hung up her outerwear and donned a thick flannel nightgown. She removed the pins and rat from her hair, took her brush and a warm blanket, opened the window and sat before it on a wooden rocker. Two songs played. Three. She brushed her hair slowly to their rhythmic bonging, unwilling to submit to sleep until the last note had been savored. The winter air threaded inside. In time she drew her feet up and hooked her heels on the chair seat, tipped her head back and listened to the soulful sound of the carols ricocheting through Deadwood Gulch.

  In his room down the hall, Noah Campbell, too, opened his window. He lit a lamp, removed his jacket, boots and shirt, sat down in his stocking feet, trousers and long underwear, and rolled a cigarette. He lit it from the lamp flame and watched the smoke linger at the window opening before it drifted back inside. He smoked two cigarettes, listening to the lovely, lonely chimes, before his fingers grew cold.

  He extinguished the lamp, pulled the rocking chair near the bed, resumed his seat and propped his calves on the mattress, covering his front with a blanket. Thinking. Thinking. Of Sarah Merritt and himself singing face to face across a crowded theater, of Sarah Merritt and himself trying to avoid each other’s eyes across the breakfast table, of Sarah Merritt and himself kissing in her newspaper office with a great deal of uncertainty, then afterward pretending it had never happened.

  He rose, stretched, stood before the open window, rubbing the back of his neck.

  If she were one of the girls up at Rose’s he’d know how to approach her. But she wasn’t a woman with whom a man trifled.

  He stood for some time considering before he crossed to his door, opened it silently and shut it just as silently behind himself. In stocking feet he ventured down the hall and paused before her door.

  He tapped quietly and waited.

  Momentarily her door opened a crack. Her room was dark, leaving her only a suspicion in the blackness.

  “Yes?” she whispered.

  “It’s Noah.”

  “Noah... what do you want?”

  “I can’t sleep. Can you?”

  She paused warily before answering, “No.”

  “What were you doing?�
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  “Sitting by the open window, listening to the chimes.”

  “Me too.”

  The implication sneaked through the crack in the door even before he said, “We could listen to them together.”

  No reply.

  “Could I come in, Sarah?”

  “No, I’m dressed for bed.”

  “Put on a robe.”

  “Noah, I don’t think—”

  “Please.”

  She remained motionless for a long time before stepping back. He touched the door and it swung freely. He stepped into her room and closed the door without a click. By the faint light of the new-fallen snow he could see she had backed off several feet and stood clutching a blanket around her shoulders.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she told him.

  “No.”

  “What if somebody heard you?”

  “Everybody’s asleep, and I’m stocking-footed.”

  He took a step toward her and she fled to her chair, drawing her knees up tightly to her chest and wrapping them with the blanket. He went to her bed and sat down in the deeper shadows while the midnight snow turned the side of her face and hair and blanket into a pale wash.

  For a while they listened to the triangles playing “O Sanctissima.”

  At length he spoke out of the dark. “Sarah, I don’t know where to go with you,” he said, as if the admission were the accumulation of all his thoughts during his vigil down the hall. “Do you know?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do. I’ve kissed you twice and both times we’ve enjoyed it, but the next day we look at each other and get spooked.”

  “You too?”

  “Yes, me too.”

  “I’m sorry. I...” She had no idea how to reply.

  “I think about you a lot, yet I’m scared to death of you. It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever been through.”

  “You? Scared of me?”

  “You’re a very intimidating woman.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she whispered, chagrined.

  “Well, you are. You’re better than most men at what you do, and you’re one hell of an organizer and a reformer and a choir director and an editor and...” He paused.

  “And?”

  “And I want to know what you think of me.”

  Her reply came in a quiet, fearful voice after long moments of silence. “I’m afraid of you, too.” He made no reply, so she continued. “And I think of you, too, more than I believe is advisable. You see, you’re not at all the sort of man I thought I’d...” She stopped.

  “You thought you’d what?”

  “Be attracted to.” There, she’d’ said it. She supposed her cheeks must be glowing in the dark.

  “What sort am I?”

  She regretted having to say it. “The sort who visits brothels.”

  “I haven’t been back to Rose’s since the first night you came to town.”

  “But the fact remains you’ve been there... with my sister.”

  “Sarah, I’m very sorry about that, but I can’t change it.”

  “And I can’t change how I feel about it. It will always be there between us.”

  “I said I haven’t been back and it’s the truth. Ask your sister.”

  “My sister is lost to me because of your kind.”

  “No! I’m not the reason she is what she is!”

  “Hold your voice down.”

  Softer, he repeated, “I’m not the reason she’s a prostitute.”

  “Then what is? If only I understood it.”

  She dropped her head to her knees and for a while only the sound of the chimes filled the room. When he touched the back of her hair she started and threw back her head. She hadn’t heard him move to the front of her chair.

  “You must leave,” she whispered, panicked.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “I must leave. I have known your sister in the biblical sense, so I must leave. Anything you or I might feel for each other should be shunted aside because of something that happened before we ever met, is that right?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes were wide, her heart hammering.

  He gripped her arms and drew her to her feet. “That’s bullshit, Sarah, and you know it.” His head lowered and their mouths joined—his opened, hers closed. He waited, but she would not relent and allow herself to kiss him back. In time he lifted his head.

  “I’m in no hurry,” he whispered. “Take your time deciding.”

  He returned to his preoccupation with her lips, wetting them languidly with his tongue, undeterred by her tightly crossed arms and her refusal to comply. He was very adept, very patient, very convincing.

  She trembled and tightened her grip on the blanket.

  Lifting his head, he remained close, kneading her shoulders through the thick wrap of wool while her wide eyes fixed upon his: light pricks of contact in the darkness.

  He slipped his hands through the break in the blanket and found her hips, rested his hands on their notches and drew her against him. Like the pause between lightning and thunder, he allowed a hesitation before tilting his head for another kiss.

  She took part primly, with her arms wedged against his chest, her body canted back at the waist. After a stretch of persuasion which bore no results, he retreated and they stood facing each other in the half-embrace.

  “You want to enjoy it, don’t you?” He lifted his hand to stroke the hair from her temple, and she shivered. “Let yourself...” In slowest motion he kissed her eyelids, her cheek, earlobe, the underside of her jaw, stealing her wariness, setting her heart a-hurry. He kissed her mouth once more, spreading the flavor of smoke upon her tongue, bringing the texture of silk where his mustache rode her skin. His hands slipped behind her, low, where her nightgown lay full and loose, made faint movements that sent it whispering across her skin like a curtain across a sill. He spread his hands wide and brought her flush against him.

  With a despairing cry she conceded, flowing to him like a breaker to a shore, throwing her arms up and veiling them both with the blanket. Their warm, full lengths joined and he held her in place without moving, their hearts beating crazily.

  She had not known simply standing so against another could make mockery of all one believed. Again a sound formed in her throat, trapped, fearful. From outside came the dying peal of the last chime. It seemed to ring within her body and shimmer outward to all the surfaces he embraced.

  She freed her mouth. “Noah...” Her eyes had closed. “This is wrong.”

  “This is human nature,” he said. “It’s how men and women find out what they think of each other.”

  “No... you must go,” she said feebly.

  “Poor Sarah...” he whispered. “So confused.” He went on kissing her neck, where the faint taste of rosewater remained... descending until his breath warmed a path through the coarse flannel of her nightgown to her right breast.

  “Stop!” she whispered, straining away, pushing on his shoulders. “Please... I cannot. Please...” She lost her grip on the blanket. It slipped to the floor as she wedged her arms between them, took fistfuls of his underwear and pushed him away. Tears were raining down her cheeks. “I’m not like Addie! I will not be like her! And my mother... my mother, too: Please, Noah, stop!”

  He went motionless, his hands still touching her, but without insistence.

  “Please, Noah...” she whispered once more.

  He stepped back, beleaguered by guilt. “I’m sorry, Sarah.” She stood with her arms crossed like a bandolier, protecting her breasts.

  “Please go.”

  “I will, but I want your promise that you won’t think less of yourself. It’s all my fault, I should have gone back to my room when you told me. Sarah, I didn’t know about your mother.”

  She turned away to the window, hugging herself—no chimes now, the magic all gone.

  Apologetically, he retrieved her blanket from the floor, took it to her and draped it across her back, leaving his
hands curved over her shoulders.

  “I want you to know something, Sarah. I’m as surprised and bewildered about what’s happening between us as you are. I don’t think either one of us planned to have any feelings for each other. As a matter of fact, I think we’re both fighting it. But I’m honest enough to admit that I didn’t just walk into your room tonight because I was randy. There’s more to it than that. I’ve come to admire you for dozens of reasons—you’re bright, and hardworking, and plucky, and you fight for what you believe in. Churches, schools, boardwalks, stopping an epidemic of smallpox, even closing the brothels. I know you’re going to doubt my honesty once I leave you, but it’s true. Even when I was locking you up in that mine I thought you were one of the spunkiest human beings I’d ever met. Spunky and fearless. Since then you’ve shown me I was right. And lately I’ve been enjoying other things about you—the way you are with the children, how hard you worked on the pageant—all right, so laugh at me—but even singing ‘Silent Night’ with you changed something between us. All that came first before tonight. Sarah... please look at me.” He forced her to turn and face him. “What happened here is nothing to cry about.”

  Her tears continued nonetheless. “What we did is not allowable. It cheapens what we feel.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “I do.”

  “In that case I promise it will never happen again.” His hands dropped from her shoulders and he stepped back.

  “Well... I’ll go now.”

  With his head hanging, he moved toward the door. She felt bereft and wanted to reach out toward him and say she was sorry too, but she couldn’t, because she was right and he was wrong to have come in here and forced the issue. Good, honorable men didn’t.

  At the door, he turned. “Merry Christmas, Sarah. I hope I didn’t ruin it for you.”

  “I enjoyed the chimes,” she said sadly.

  He studied her silhouette against the dim window light, opened the door and soundlessly disappeared.

  CHAPTER

  13

  At midnight on Christmas Eve, Rose Hossiter’s brothel was crowded with lonely miners who sought company to relieve their Christmas desolation. Kithless, they had watched the Christmas pageant and thought of home—of mothers, fathers, siblings, sweethearts and friends left behind in the cities as large as Boston, Munich and Dublin; or in rural communities with names too obscure to bring the light of recognition to a listener’s eye. They thought of familiar hearths and mothers’ bread and their old pet dogs, maybe long since dead. Some of them thought of the children they’d abandoned and the wives they’d send for, come spring.