Opening a Chestnut Burr Part 36

"Certainly you will, if I think of you groaning up there by yourself, while I am singing, perhaps:

"'I love to steal awhile away From every c.u.mbering care!'"

"Then I'm a c.u.mbering care!"

"Whether you are or not, I'm not going to steal away from you to-night.

Come, do as I bid you."

He was only too glad to submit to her delicious tyranny. She wheeled the lounge up to the fire, and placed her chair beside it, while the rest of the family, seeing that he had his old malady, went to the sitting-room.

"I have great pride in my nursing powers," she continued, in her cheery way. "Now, if I were a man, I'd certainly be a doctor."

"Thank Heaven you are not!" he said, with a devout earnestness that quite startled her.

"What? A doctor?" she asked, quickly.

"Yes--no; I mean a man, and doctor too."

"I see no reason why you should show such bitter opposition to my being a man or a doctor either. Why should you?"

"O--well--I think you are just right as a woman. You make me believe in the doctrine of election, for it seems to me that you were destined from all eternity to be just what you are."

"What a strange, unfathomable doctrine that is!" said Annie, softly and musingly.

"It's nothing but mystery all around us," he replied, wearily and dejectedly.

"No, not 'all around us,'" she answered, quickly. "It's clear when we look up. Faith builds a safe bridge to G.o.d, and to Him there are no mysteries."

Her touch upon his brow thrilled him, and her presence was both exhilarating and restful.

At last she said, "I am sorry you have these dreadful headaches so often."

"I shall never be again."

"Why so?"

"Because they have led to this evening. It has been so many long, miserable years since I experienced anything like this."

"Ah, I see, you have been very lonely. You have had no one to care for you, and that I believe has been the cause of half your trouble--evil, I mean. Indeed, they are about the same thing. Don't you see? The world is too large a place for a home. You need a nook in it, with some one there to look after you and for you to think about."

He looked at her searchingly, and then turned away his face in pain.

She could not utter such words in that placid style, were she not utterly devoid of the feeling that was filling his soul with an ecstasy of hope and fear.

"Do not think that even many of our s.e.x are like Miss Bently. You will see and choose more wisely hereafter, and find that, in exchanging that wretched club-life for a cosey home of your own, you take a good step in all respects."

"Would to Heaven that I had met such a girl as you at first!" he ventured to say. "How different then all might have been!"

"There is no use in dwelling on the past," she replied, innocently.

"You are now pledged to make the future right."

"G.o.d helping me, I will. I will use every means in my power," he said, in a tone of deep earnestness; and, as princ.i.p.al part of the means, determined to take her advice, but with reference to herself. After a few moments he said, "Miss Walton, as I promised to be perfectly frank with you, I want to ask an explanation of something that I do not understand, and which has been almost a heavenly surprise to me. I was nearly certain before this afternoon that when you came to know what a stained, evil man I am--"

"Was," interrupted Annie.

"No, what I am. Character is not made in a moment. As yet, I only hope and purpose to do better. I can hardly understand why you do not shrink from me in disgust. It seemed that both your faith and your nature would lead you to do this. I thought it possible that out of your kindness you might try to stand at a safe distance and give me some good advice across the gulf. But that which I feared would drive you from me forever has only brought you nearer. Again I say, it has been a heavenly surprise."

"You use the word 'heavenly' with more appropriateness than you think,"

she replied, gravely. "All such surprises are heavenly in their origin, and my course is but a faint reflection of Heaven's disposition toward you, and was prompted by the duty I owe to G.o.d as well as to you.

Self-righteousness would have led me in Pharisaic pride to say, 'Stand aside, I am holier than thou.' But you have only to read the life of the perfect One to know that in so doing I should not have been like Him. He laid His rescuing hands on both the physical and the moral leper--"

"As you have upon me," said Gregory, with a look of such intense grat.i.tude that she was embarra.s.sed.

"I deserve no great credit, for it was only right that I should do the utmost in my power to help you. How else could I be a Christian in any real sense? But there is nothing strange about it. Christianity is not like false religions, that require unnatural and useless sacrifices. If I were a true physician, and found you suffering from a terrible and contagious disease, while I feared and loathed the disease, I might have the deepest sympathy for you and do my best to cure you. I do loathe the sin you confessed, inexpressibly. See how near it came to destroying you. While G.o.d hates the sin, He ever loves the sinful."

"I hope you will always be divine in that respect," he could not forbear saying, with rising color.

But her thoughts were so intent on what was uppermost in her heart that she did not notice his covert meaning, and said, innocently, "I will give you honest friends.h.i.+p so long as you honestly try to redeem the pledges of to-day."

"Then I have your friends.h.i.+p for life, be it long or short," said he, decisively.

With more lightness in her tone she continued, "And I too will ask a question that has a bearing on a little theory of my own. Supposing I had shrunk from you, and tried to give some good advice from a safe distance, what would you have done?"

"Left for New York to-morrow, and gone straight to the devil as one of his own imps," he replied, without a moment's hesitation.

She sighed deeply, and said, "I fear you would--that is, if left to yourself. And the worst of it is, it seems to me that this is the way the Church is trying to save the world. Suppose a doctor should address his patients through a speaking-trumpet and hand them his remedies on the end of a very long rod. Death would laugh at his efforts. People can be saved only as Christ saved them. We must go where they are, lay our hands upon them, and look sympathy and hope right into their eyes.

If Christ's followers would only do this, how many more might be rescued who now seem hopelessly given over to evil!"

"Those who won't do it," said Gregory, bitterly, "are in no sense His true followers, but are merely the 'hangers on' of His army, seeking to get out of it all they can for self. Every general knows that the 'camp-followers' are the bane of an army."

"Come, Mr. Gregory," said she, gently, "we are not the general, and therefore not the judge. After this I shall expect to see you in the regular ranks, ready to give and take blows."

They now joined Mr. Walton and Miss Eulie in the sitting-room, and Gregory professed to feel, and indeed was, much better, and after a little music they separated for the night. Although still suffering, Gregory sat by his fire a long time, forgetful of pain.

High, bl.u.s.tering winds prevailed all the following day, but they only made the quiet and cosiness of Mr. Walton's fireside more delightful.

Gregory did not care to go out if he went alone. He wished to be where he could see Annie as often as possible, for every word and smile from her in the intervals of her duties was precious. He did honestly mean to become a good man if it were possible, but he saw in her the only hopeful means. He did not pretend to either faith in G.o.d or love for Him as yet, but only felt a glow of grat.i.tude, a warming of his heart toward Him in view of His great mercy in sending to his aid such a ministering spirit as Annie had proved. He took it as an omen that G.o.d meant kindly by him, and through this human hand might save at last.

And he clung to this hand as the drowning do to anything that keeps them from sinking into dark and unknown depths. He saw in Annie Walton earthly happiness certainly, and his best prospect of heaven. What wonder then that his heart lay at her feet in entire consecration?

Apart from the peculiar fascination that she herself had for him, he had motives for loving her that actuate but few. If she had saved him from physical death it would have been a little thing in comparison, but he shuddered to think of the precipice from which she had drawn him back.

He was cautious in revealing himself to her. The presence of others was a restraint, and he plainly saw that she had no such regard for him as he felt for her. But he hoped with intense fervor--yes, he even prayed to that G.o.d whom he had so long slighted--that in time she might return his love. To-day he would close his eyes on the past and future. She, the suns.h.i.+ne of his soul, was near, and he was content to bask in her smiles.

Annie had given her father and aunt to understand that their conspiracy promised to result in success, and they treated him with marked but delicate kindness. The day pa.s.sed in music, reading, and conversation, and it was to Gregory the happiest he remembered--one of the sweet May days that, by some happy blunder of nature, occasionally bless us in March--and he made the very most of it. Its close found Annie Walton enthroned in his heart.

As for Annie, he perplexed her a little, but she explained everything peculiar in his words and manner on the ground of his grat.i.tude only, and the glow of his newly awakened moral nature. If she had been an experienced belle, she might have understood his symptoms better, but she was one of the last in the world to imagine people falling in love with her. Never having received much admiration from strangers, with no long list of victims, and believing from her own experience that love was a gradual growth resulting from long knowledge and intimacy with its object, she could not dream that this critical man, who had seen the beauties of two continents, would in a few days be carried away by her plain face. Nor was he by her face, but by herself.

Men of mind are rarely captivated by a face merely, however beautiful, but by what it represents, or what they imagine it does. Woe be to the beauty who has no better capital than her face! With it she can allure some one into marrying her; but if he marries for an intelligent companion, he is likely to prove the most disappointed and indifferent of husbands on discovering the fraud. The world will never get over its old belief that the fair face is the index of graces slightly veiled, and ready to be revealed when the right to know is gained. In nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and the average novel, the beautiful heroine is also lovely, and so in spite of adverse experience the world will ever expect wisdom and truth from red lips, till they say too much--till the red lips themselves prove the contrary. Then come the anger and disgust which men ever visit upon those who deceive and disappoint them. Beauty is a dainty and exquisite vestibule to a temple; but when a wors.h.i.+pper is beguiled into entering, only to find a stony, misshapen idol and a dingy shrine, this does not conduce to future devotion.

Annie's face would not arrest pa.s.sers-by, and so she had not been spoiled by too much homage, which is not good for man or woman. But after pa.s.sing the plain, simple portico of externals into the inner temple of her sweet and truthful life, the heart once hers would wors.h.i.+p with undying faith and love.