It was not a long walk from Ruth's home to the school-house, yet if it were to be measured by Shefford's emotion the distance would have been unending. The sacrifice offered by Ruth and Joe would have been noble under any circumstances had they been Gentiles or persons with no particular religion, but, considering that they were Mormons, that Ruth had been a sealed-wife, that Joe had been brought up under the strange, secret, and binding creed, their action was no less than tremendous in its import. Shefford took it to mean vastly more than loyalty to him and pity for Fay Larkin. As Ruth and Joe had arisen to this height, so perhaps would other young Mormons, have arisen. It needed only the situation, the climax, to focus these long-insulated, slow-developing and inquiring minds upon the truth—that one wife, one mother of children, for one man at one time was a law of nature, love, and righteousness. Shefford felt as if he were marching with the whole younger generation of Mormons, as if somehow he had been a humble instrument in the working out of their destiny, in the awakening that was to eliminate from their religion the only thing which kept it from being as good for man, and perhaps as true, as any other religion.
And then suddenly he turned the corner of school-house to encounter Joe talking with the Mormon Henninger. Elder Smith was not present.
“Why, hello, Ruth!” greeted Joe. “You've fetched Mary some dinner. Now that's good of you.”
“May I go in?” asked Ruth.
“Reckon so,” replied Henninger, scratching his head. He appeared to be tractable, and probably was good-natured under pleasant conditions. “She ought to have somethin' to eat. An' nobody 'pears—to have remembered that—we're so set up.”
He unbarred the huge, clumsy door and allowed Ruth to pass in.
“Joe, you can go in if you want,” he said. “But hurry out before Elder Smith comes back from his dinner.”
Joe mumbled something, gave a husky cough, and then went in.
Shefford experienced great difficulty in presenting to this mild Mormon a natural and unagitated front. When all his internal structure seemed to be in a state of turmoil he did not see how it was possible to keep the fact from showing in his face. So he turned away and took aimless steps here and there.
“'Pears like we'd hev rain,” observed Henninger. “It's right warm an' them clouds are onseasonable.”