Crystal looked at the closing door and then at Matthew. He was waiting, and she couldn’t meet his eyes. Getting to her feet, she paced to the window. In the distance the last of the fire colored the sky with a burst of bright smoke. The fire made her think of Lucas.
With a shrug she turned to Matthew. “I suppose Lucas is off somewhere, laughing because he has won again. He’s left a heap of human wreckage behind him while he’s running across the mountains with his bag of gold clenched in his dirty fist.”
She couldn’t avoid Matthew’s eyes. He said, “You sound bitter.”
“Do you not think I have a right to be?”
“Justifiably.” His voice was rough. “But need we spend time talking about him?”
“You asked me to forgive you.”
“And you can’t.” He made the flat statement. Getting to his feet he paced the room.
She watched his limping gait, studied the ragged garments he wore, and waited. Finally she spoke. “Matthew, you are so strange. The limp. You’ve lost weight. Those terrible clothes.”
He turned and she began to see glimpses of the old Matthew in his twisted grin. “No longer the dandy? I’ll never be again. Suddenly it isn’t important. It’s nothing.”
He came to sprawl in the chair. With his head tipped back and his eyes nearly closed, he hesitated. When the words came they were in chopped phrases, leaving Crystal bewildered with the gaps. “It’s been long. A person’s bound to change. No idea it would be so much until I saw me reflected in you. Did you inherit the bitterness from me?
“Crystal, life moves on. Values change. I thought we’d pick it up from where we left off. Like a half-forgotten chapter in an interesting book. Impossible. It will be a learning over again.
“You married a Southern gentleman. I’m fast becoming a stubborn Yankee, like Garrison, Mott, and some of the others.”
“An abolitionist?”
“No, simply a man who believes so strongly that he dares stand on the hard side of a cause. For God, for a united country, for freedom for the slaves—”
Crystal interrupted. “Matthew, I do forgive you. Now please go.”
“You don’t believe me? I expected that.” He got to his feet.
“That isn’t quite so. In the past you had strong words, but without this much conviction. It’s just that somehow you’ve grown up and away from me. We’re no longer able to measure minds.”
“You’re diminishing yourself. I’ve always thought you a fine woman, worthy—”
“Matthew, please.” She turned quickly, her hands waving off his words. “Talking convinces me we no longer walk the same road.” Getting to her feet she moved restlessly around the room.
In a moment he was beside her, touching her arm. She trembled at the unexpected contact. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “It’s just that you seemed almost like a dream. The kind of dreams I’ve been having since Pennsylvania days. Near enough to touch, yet—” He paused, adding, “Not real. Will you please come sit down and tell me what has been going on in your life? Did you stay in Pennsylvania? I remembered we talked about going west.” He hesitated. In a rush of words, he said, “I wanted to inquire about Clara Brown while here, just wanted to know if she could tell me about you.”
Crystal had been watching Matthew. “Your arm,” she said. “You were wounded—in a battle?”
“Yes, that’s where I met Daniel and Amy.” His grin was twisted again. “It won’t keep me out of the Army.”
Crystal stood up and walked around the room again. “I’m sorry you were injured.” For a minute she faced him. “That does change a person, doesn’t it?”
His face was puzzled. “I keep thinking you are trying to dig me up like a flower patch, to see what’s buried.”
Their eyes met. Matthew came across the room to her. “Crystal, it’s late. I won’t trouble you any longer with my presence.”
She put her hand to her face, but it was too late. On his face she could read the hope. For a moment she met his eyes, knowing all the forgotten things were alive and life was possible. Turning, with a shaky voice, she admitted, “I guess habits are hard to break.”
“Habit? I don’t think you’re telling me it was all just a comfortable old habit, loving.”
His hand was under her chin in the warm, familiar touch. She closed her eyes and tried to move away. “My dear, I won’t force you. But I would think that if you didn’t love me still, then a sisterly kiss would be no more than a common courtesy.”
He was smiling, confident. His hand on her shoulder was warm and gentle. It had always been that way, warm and gentle.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because it is so impossible.”
“That shouldn’t bring tears if it is what you really mean.” He was still waiting and his presence was overwhelming. “Will you talk with me? It seems like the three of us deserve a chance.”
“Three?
“You and me and Love.”
“Matthew, did you mean those things you said about God and praying?”
“I did. Crystal, I didn’t realize the state of confusion I lived in when I considered myself a Christian. You’ve guessed, of course, that God didn’t consider me a true follower.” Abruptly he said, “Crystal, what’s wrong? All this talk—it’s like I can’t reach you. I would rather you lash out at me, say what must be said, rather than this cold formality.”
She went to the window. “I had a mission. I suppose it is finished now. Cold? One must put restrictions on one’s mind and emotions if there is to be success in such an endeavor.”
“Mind telling me about it?”
“Lucas and I have been working together. Naturally, he bought me with the promise of telling me your whereabouts. But I do believe he thought I was a genuine Confederate. For some time, that is. Right at the last he caught me passing a message to my contact.”
He moved restlessly. “Would you believe, I’m not interested in hearing about Lucas? Why are you telling me this?”
She cried, “I’m trying to make you understand!”
“That you’ve been working with Lucas—or is it something more?” His face was still, remote. Once before he had looked that way. Despair moved through Crystal, and suddenly she was weighted with fatigue.
“I only want to get this interview over,” she murmured through heavy lips. In a moment she added, “I chose to work with him. I didn’t expect him to take advantage of the situation. Matthew—” Now the words were coming in a rush. “Lucas raped me, and for the past months, since February, I’ve lived with one desire. That is to kill him.”
She paced the room and returned to see the effect of her words on him. Not anger, not outrage. There were tears on his face. She backed against the dressing table. “Matthew, it really is finished. It is an impossible situation.”
He sat down and rubbed his palms over his eyes. “My darling, another failure. Now I understand the bitterness, the ugliness I was seeing. Will there ever be an end to the suffering I’ve put you through? Crystal, I dare not ask you to forgive me for this. I can’t bear to hear you say no, but I understand. As soon as I walked into the room tonight I could feel the oppression. Naturally my conceit had it marked out. All you needed was my love and the sure promise I have turned over a new leaf.”
“You don’t understand, Matthew. I’m trying to explain why we can’t just take up our life again. It isn’t lack of love. It’s—”
She straightened the objects on her dressing table. With flat, hard words she stated, “I don’t believe, any more than you or Daniel, that Lucas is dead. I still have the passion to track him down, to kill him for all of the ugliness he has heaped on me.”
Her controlled voice broke, and with a burst of passion she cried, “For hurting you and twisting your mind with his selfishness, for the outrage of rape. See, Matthew, I’ll never be a whole person. I’ll never be able to hold my head up again until I’ve rectified the disgrace by killing him.”
Matthew sat down on the edge of the bed. She knew he was watching her face as she moved around the room. Then she returned to the dressing table. Right to left she began again, laying the objects out and then pushing the array to the center of the table. He was very close, and the warmth of his body, the intensity of his eyes moving with the changing pattern of her fingers wrapped her into a cocoon with him in which the movement of her hands united their spirits.
Startled, she looked up. Again there was the impression of his gray eyes channeling between them. A bridge.
“There’s another solution.” He paused. “Do you know I felt this same kind of outrage in battle? The violation of my person, my mind, my body—given unwillingly. Strange, I thought it the most unendurable situation I had ever faced. It was Eli Randolph who made me realize the violation of my spirit was worse.”
Matthew moved away from her. With his thoughts far away, he paced the room. The distance between them stretched the sense of oneness until she felt she must follow after him. He turned to look down at her. “He said the violation of the human spirit creeps upon us without our knowing it. A seduction by thought and action.”
“Without agony? I can’t believe it so.”
“The agony comes not at the rape of the soul, but by the deliverance. A kind of birth agony.”
She felt the jarring note of his words and realized he had severed the thought pattern her mind had said was inevitable. Coldly she faced him. “And of course you have an answer. Dare I guess that it is to be a good girl and love my enemies?”
“That is an utter impossibility.”
“I could have told you that.”
“On your own. Just as the remedy for me was workable, my dear wife, it will be workable for you. I know. Since it came from Eli, and I have seen the pattern in him and Amelia, I can assure you it works. I’ve started on the course myself.”
“I heard you say something about being on your knees and being pounded on the back.” Her voice was still cold and he was grinning at her, thawing the ice.
“That’s right. Crystal, I was serious about me, you, and Love. That’s the only way we’ll be able to handle life. It starts with accepting Jesus Christ as Savior, but the momentum really picks up when you take Him as Lord of your life. Of course it isn’t easy to surrender hate, but I’ll be there to help you—by pounding you on the back.”
He reached out to touch the tears on her cheeks. “You are my precious wife. How I look forward to spending the rest of my life telling you that!”