Opening a Chestnut Burr Part 28

"Come, Mr. Gregory, you are growing sentimental. I will go and see if supper is ready."

"Please stay, and I will talk of the multiplication table."

"No, that led to the 'Nebular Hypothesis.' You had better prepare for supper;" and she vanished.

"It's my fate," he said, rising, "to drive away every good and pleasant thing."

He went to the fire and stood where she had sat, and again thought was busy.

"She seems so real and substantial, and yet so intangible! Her defensive armor is perfect, and I cannot get near or touch her unless she permits it. The sincerest compliment glances off. Out of her kindness she helps me and does me good. She bewitches and sways me by her spells, but I might as well seek to imprison a spirit of the air as to gain any hold upon her. I wonder whom or what she was thinking of, that such dreamy, tender smiles should flit across her face."

How his face would have darkened with wrath and hate, if he had known that his detestation, Hunting, had inspired them!

The tea-bell reminded him how time was pa.s.sing, and he went to his room with an elastic step that one would suppose impossible after seeing him in the morning. But, as is usual with nervous organizations, he sank or rallied rapidly in accordance with circ.u.mstances. When he appeared at the table, Mr. Walton could hardly believe his eyes.

"It is again the result of Miss Walton's witchcraft," explained Gregory. "The moment I felt her hand upon my brow, there came a sense of relief. In Italy they would make a saint of her, and bring out the sick for her to touch."

"And so soon lose their saint by some contagious disease," said Annie, laughing.

"I fear, sir, I was very rude to you this morning, but in truth I was beside myself with pain."

"Annie has a wonderful power of magnetism; I don't know what else to call it," said Miss Eulie. "She can drive away one of my headaches quicker than all other remedies combined."

"You are making out," said Annie, "that my proper calling is that of a nurse. If you don't change the subject, I'll leave you all to take care of yourselves, and go down to Bellevue."

"If you do," laughed Gregory, "I'll break every bone in my body, and be carried into your ward as a homeless stranger."

The supper-hour pa.s.sed away in light and cheerful conversation. As if by common consent, the scenes on the mountain were not mentioned in the presence of the children, and they evidently had had their curiosity satisfied on the subject.

Annie seemed tired and languid after supper and Miss Eulie volunteered to see the children safely to their rest. Mr. Walton insisted that Annie should take his easy-chair, and Gregory placed a footstool at her feet, and together they "made a baby of her," she said. The old gentleman then took his seat, and seemed to find unbounded content in gazing on his beloved daughter. Their guest appeared restless and began to pace the room. Suddenly he asked Mr. Walton, "Have you heard anything of the fugitives?"

"Not a word beyond the fact that they bought tickets for New York and took the train. I have telegraphed to the City Police Department, and forwarded the description of their persons which Annie gave me. Their dwelling has been examined by a competent person, but evidently he is an old and experienced criminal and knows how to cover up his tracks. I think it extremely providential that they did nothing worse than send you over on the other side of the mountain in order to clear a way for escape. Such desperate people often believe only in the silence of death. They might have caused that dog to tear you to pieces and have appeared blameless themselves. If caught, only your testimony could convict them, though I suspect Mrs. Tompkins and her son. Young Tompkins brought them with their luggage to the depot. He says the man called 'Vight' met him returning from the delivery of a load of wood, and engaged his services. As he often does teaming for people in those back districts his story is plausible; and he swears he knew nothing against the man. But he is a bad drinking fellow, and just the one to become an accomplice in any rascality. I fear they will all escape us, and yet I am profoundly grateful that matters are no worse."

While Mr. Walton was talking, Gregory was looking intently at Annie.

She was conscious of his scrutiny, and her color rose under it, but she continued to gaze steadily at the fire.

"And I am going to increase that grat.i.tude a hundred-fold, sir," he said, earnestly.

Annie looked up at him with a startled, deprecatory air. "No, Miss Walton," he said, answering her look, "I will not be silent. While it is due to your generosity that the world does not hear of your heroism as the story would naturally be told, it is your father's right that he should hear it, and know the priceless jewel that he has in his daughter. I know that appearances will be against me. If you can take her view of the matter, sir, I shall be glad, otherwise I cannot help it;" and he related the events as they had actually occurred, softening or palliating his course in not the slightest degree.

Mr. Walton turned ashen pale as he thus for the first time learned the desperate nature of his daughter's peril. Then rising with a sudden impulse of pride and affection he clasped her in his arms.

Gregory was about to leave the room, when Mr. Walton's voice detained him.

"Do not go, sir. You will pardon a father's weakness."

"Father, I give you my word and honor," cried Annie, eagerly, "that Mr.

Gregory did not act the part of a coward. He scarcely does himself justice in his story. He did not realize the principle involved, and saw in the promise he gave the readiest way out of an awkward and dangerous predicament. He did not think the man's crime was any of our business--"

"There is no need of pleading Mr. Gregory's cause so earnestly, my dear," interrupted her father. "I think I understand his course fully, and share your view of it. I am too well accustomed to the taking of evidence not to detect the ring of truth."

"I cannot tell you, sir, what a relief it is to me that you and Miss Walton can judge thus correctly of my action. This morning and yesterday I believed that you and all the world would regard me as the meanest of cowards, and the bitterness of death was in the thought."

"No, sir," said Mr. Walton, kindly but gravely; "your course did not result from cowardice. But permit an old man and your father's friend to say that it did result from the lack of high moral principle. Its want in this case might have been fatal, for the world, as you feared, would scarcely do you justice. Let it be a lesson to you, my dear young friend, that only the course which is strictly right is safe, even as far as this world is concerned."

Gregory's face flushed deeply, but he bowed his head in humility at the rebuke.

"At the same time," continued Mr. Walton, "it was manly in you to state the case frankly to me as you have done; for you knew that you might s.h.i.+eld yourself behind Annie's silence."

"It was simply your right to know it," said Gregory, in a low tone.

After a few moments of musing silence, Annie said, earnestly, "I do so pity that poor woman!"

"I imagine she is little better than her companion," said Mr. Walton.

"Indeed she is, father," said Annie, eagerly. "I cannot tell you how I feel for her, and I know from her manner and words that her guilty life is a crus.h.i.+ng burden. It must be a terrible thing to a woman capable of good (as she is), and wis.h.i.+ng to live a true life, to be irrevocably bound to a man utterly bad."

"She is not so bound to him," said her father; "can she not leave him?"

"Ah! there comes in a mystery," she replied, and the subject dropped.

Soon after, they separated for the night.

But Gregory had much food for painful thought. After the experience of that day his chief desire was to stand well in Miss Walton's esteem.

And yet how did he stand--how could he stand, being what he was? He was not conscious of love for her as yet. He would have been satisfied if she had said, "I will be your friend in the truest sense of the word."

He had no small vanity, and understood her kindness. She was trying to do good to him as she would to any one else. She was sorry for him as for the wretched woman who also found an evil life bitter, but she could never think of him as a dear, congenial, trusted friend. Even her father, in her presence, had rebuked his lack of principle, a.s.serting that his nature was like the vile weed; and this had been proved every day of his visit. If she should come to know of his purpose and effort to tempt her into the display of petty weakness and lack of principle herself, would she not regard him as "utterly bad," and shrink with loathing even from the bonds of friends.h.i.+p?

He was learning the lesson that wrong sooner or later will bring its own punishment, and that the little experiment upon which he had entered as a relief from ennui might become the impa.s.sable gulf between him and happiness; for he knew that, if their relations ever verged toward mutual confidence, she would ask questions that would render lies his only escape. He could not sink to that resort. It was late before he found in sleep refuge from painful thoughts.

The next day he was much alone. The news of their adventure having got abroad, many because of their sincere regard for Annie, and not a few out of curiosity, called to talk the matter over. After meeting one or two of these parties, and witnessing the modesty and grace with which Annie satisfied and foiled their curiosity at the same time, he was glad to escape further company in a long and solitary ramble. The air was mild, so that he could take rest in sunny nooks, and thus he spent most of the day by himself. His conscience was awakened, and the more pure and beautiful Annie's character grew in his estimation, the more dastardly his attempt upon it seemed. Never before had his evil life appeared so hideous and hateful.

And yet his remorse had nothing in it of true penitence. It was rather a bitter, impotent revolt at what he regarded as cruel necessity. Now that he had been forced to abandon his theory that people are good as they are untempted, he adopted another, which, if it left him in a miserable predicament, exonerated him from blame. He had stated it to Annie when he said, "You are made of different clay from other people."

He tried hard to believe this, and partially succeeded. "It is her nature to be good, and mine to be evil," he often said to himself that long and lonely day. "I have had a fatal gravitation toward evil ever since I can remember."

But this was not true. Indeed, it could be proved out of his own memory that he had had as many good and n.o.ble impulses as the majority, and that circ.u.mstances had not been more adverse to him than to numerous others. He was dimly conscious of these facts, though he tried to shut his eyes to them.

A man finally gets justice at the bar of his own conscience, but it is extorted gradually, reluctantly, with much befogging of the case.

Still this theory would not help him much with Annie Walton, for he knew that she would never entertain it a moment.

Thus he wandered for hours amid old scenes and boyish haunts, utterly oblivious of them, brooding more and more darkly and despondingly over his miserable lot. He tried to throw off the burden of depressing thought by asking, in sudden fierceness, "Well, what is Annie Walton to me? I have only known her a short time, and having lived thus long, can live the rest of my days--probably few--without her."

But it was of no use. His heart would not echo the words, but in its very depths a voice clear and distinct seemed to say, "I want to be with her--to be near her. With her, the hours are winged; away, they are leaden-footed. She awakens hope, she makes it appear possible to be a man."

He remembered her hand upon his aching brow, and groaned aloud in view of the gulf that his own life had placed between them.

"'Neither can they pa.s.s to us,'" he said, unconsciously repeating the words of Scripture. "With her nature what I know it to be, she cannot in any way ally it to mine."

As the shadows of evening deepened he sauntered wearily and despondingly to the house. There were still guests in the parlor, and he pa.s.sed up to his room. For the first time he found it chilly and fireless. It had evidently been forgotten, and he felt himself neglected; and it seemed that he could drop out of existence unnoted and uncared for. In what had been his own home, the place where for so many years he had experienced the most thoughtful tenderness, there came over him a sense of loneliness and desolation such as he had never before known or believed possible. He felt himself orphaned of heaven and earth, of G.o.d and man.