They sat in silence, without move or stir, and each busy with her own thoughts, for long after that, and then Ess spoke:—
“Thank you for telling me, and thank you for listening to me, for of course you’ll blame me for thinking and acting as I did with Steve.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Dan, “I’m older than you, and although you’ve lived in the cities where you see and learn a lot, I’ve lived in the out-back, where we don’t see so much, but learn our lessons deep and hard; and I’ve learned never to blame or praise anything that a man or a woman does, for love, or through love. If they’ve done right, they’re above my praise, and if they’ve done wrong, they’ll have their own punishment, without my blame. Don’t do wrong now, and have to bear the punishment for it all your days.”
“What can I do?” said Ess, meekly. “Tell me, and I’ll try to do it.”
“It’s easy to tell, though you may not find it so easy to do. See him and ask him to forget that blow you struck, and ask him to forgive you for ever doubting him. Don’t be sayin’ it as if it was from the teeth outwards, but from the very heart of you. Steve’s not the man I take him for if that doesn’t wipe it off his mind as a dog licks a plate. It’s not so long since I was telling Steve that if he wanted to make it up with a woman who had wronged him, to ask her to forgive him. But Steve has more pride than a man ought to have by rights, or than he’s likely to find of use to him, and I doubt if ever he’d take that easy way out.”
“I was wrong, and I know it now,” said Ess, submissively. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have lied to me. There was a mistake somewhere, and he wouldn’t show me I was wrong because he resented my not believing him. I’ll try to tell him so, Mrs. Dan.”
“And you’ll never regret it, whatever the result,” said Mrs. Dan.
But after Ess had gone to bed that night Dan gave a word to his wife that worried her more than she cared to confess.
“Steve’s down in the bar, and drinkin’ like hell’s bells a-ringin’,” said Dan. “I tried to get him to come up here for an hour, but not he—the divil a fut of him. And he’s done wi’ Thunder Ridge an’ Coolongolong an’ Connor’s Leap an’ all the likes he told me; an’ he’s booked his seat on the first coach out that goes when the roads is passable.”
“I think there’s that here, when he knows it, that’ll hold him longer than the bad roads,” said Mrs. Dan, complacently.