The Mystery of the Locks Part 12

"I don't dare to," she answered, looking him full in the face, and without the slightest hesitation. "I am afraid I would say something I ought not to."

He looked at her curiously for a moment, trying to divine her meaning, and concluded that if she should speak more freely, he would hear something surprising; either she would denounce him for his boldness, or profess a love for him which would compel him to give up his resolution of never seeing her again.

"That was an unfortunate expression," he said. "I am sorry you said that, for it has pleased my odd fancy; indeed, it is precisely what I was hoping you would say, but there is all the more reason now for my repeating to you that I am dangerous. I know how desperate my affairs are; how desperate I am, and how unfortunate it would be if you should become involved. Therefore I say to you, as a condemned prisoner might shut out the single ray of light which brightened his existence, so that he might meet his inevitable fate bravely, that you must avoid me, and walk another way when you see me approaching."

A hoa.r.s.e whistle came to them from the ferry in the river, and Dorris thought of it as an angry warning from a monster, in whose keeping he was, to come away from a presence which afforded him pleasure.

"May I speak a word?" the girl inquired, turning abruptly toward him.

"Yes; a dozen, or a thousand, though I would advise you not to."

"Is what you have said to me exactly true?"

"Upon my honor; exactly true," he answered.

"Is there no morbid selfishness in it; no foolish fancy?"

"Upon my honor, none!"

"Do you believe I am your dream come true with the same matter-of-fact belief which convinces you that there is a ferry in the river?"

She pointed out the boat as it moved lazily through the water, and as he looked at it he seemed to resolve the matter carefully in his mind.

"Yes," he answered, "I am as certain that you are the woman I have loved devotedly all my life, as I am certain that there is a river at the foot of the hill. What I have said to you is generally regarded as sentimental nonsense except when it is protected by the charity of a sweetheart or a wife; but it is in every man's heart, though it is sometimes never expressed, and my idle life here has made me bold enough to state that it is true. I have been seeking contentment with so much eagerness, and know so well that it is hard to find, that I have come to believe that there is but one more chance, and that I would find what I lack in the love of a woman like you. Even if I should discover by experience that I am mistaken in this belief, I would feel better off than I ever did before; for I would then conclude that my fancies were wrong, and that I was as well off as any man; but this feeling will always be denied me, for I am denied the privilege of happiness now that it is within my reach. My lonely life here has wrung a confession from me which I should have kept to myself, but it is every word true; you can depend on that."

Annie Benton seemed satisfied with the answers he had made, and there was another long silence between them.

"And your music--you play like one possessed," he said finally, talking to the wind, probably, for he was not looking at the girl. "Every sentiment my heart has ever known you have expressed in chords. Had I not known differently, I should have thought you were familiar with my history and permitted the organ to tell it whenever we met. What a voice the old box has, and what versatility; for its power in representing angels is only equalled by its power to represent devils. There is a song with which I have become familiar from hearing you play the air; it is a sermon which appealed to me as nothing ever did before. Before I knew the words, I felt sure that they were promises of mercy and forgiveness; and when I found them, I thought I must have been familiar with them all my life; they were exactly what I had imagined. To look at your cold, pa.s.sionless face now, no one would suspect your wonderful genius. You look innocent enough, but I do not wonder that you are regarded as a greater attraction than the minister. I have been told that you can kill the sermon, when you want to, by freezing the audience before it commences, and I believe it. I have no doubt that you take pride in controlling with your deft fingers the poor folks who wors.h.i.+p under the steeple which mounts up below us. I only wonder that you do not cause them to cheer, and swing their hats, for they say that you can move them to tears at will."

"I never feel like cheering myself," she answered, "and I suppose that is why the organ never does. But I very often feel sad, because I am so commonplace, and because there is so little in the future for me. If I play so coldly at times that even the minister is affected, it is because I am indifferent, and forget, and not because I intend it."

"If you are commonplace," Allan Dorris replied, "you have abundant company; for the world is full of common people. We are all creatures of such common mould that I wonder we do not tire of our ugly forms. Out of every hundred thousand there is a genius, who neglects all the virtues of the common folks, and is hateful save as a genius. For his one good quality he has a hundred bad ones; but he is not held to strict account, like the rest of us, for genius is so rare that we encourage it, no matter what the cost. But I have heard that these great people are monstrosities, and thoroughly wretched. I would rather be a king in one honest heart, than a sight for thousands. But this is not running away from you, as I promised, and if I remain here longer I shall lose the power. My path is down the hill; yours is up."

He lifted his hat to her, and walked away; but she called to him,--

"I am going down the hill, too, and I will accompany you."

He waited until she came up, and they walked away together.

The girl had said that she was going down the hill, too, and would accompany him; but Dorris knew that she meant the hill on which they were standing, not the one he referred to. He referred to a hill as famous as wickedness, and known in every house because of its open doors to welcome back some straggler from the noisy crowd travelling down the famous hill; but he thought that should a woman like Annie Benton consent to undertake the journey with him, he would change his course, and travel the other way, in spite of everything.

"Did I do wrong in asking you to wait for me?" she inquired, after they had walked awhile in silence.

"Yes," he answered, "because it pleased me. Be very careful to do nothing which pleases me, for I am not accustomed to it, and the novelty may cause me to forget the vow I have made. A man long accustomed to darkness is very fond of the light. What do you think of me, anyway?"

"What a strange question!" the girl said, turning to look at him.

"Be as frank with me as I was with you. What do you think of me?"

The girl thought the matter over for a while, and replied,--

"If I should answer you frankly, I should please you; and you have warned me against that."

Dorris was amused at the reply, and laughed awhile to himself.

"I didn't think of that," he said, though he probably had thought of it, and hoped that her reply would be what it was. "I am glad to hear that I am not repugnant to you, though. It will be a comfort to me to know, now that my dream has come true, that the subject of it does not regard me with distrust or aversion. I am glad, too, that after dreaming of the suns.h.i.+ne so long, it is not a disappointment. In my loneliness hereafter that circ.u.mstance will be a satisfaction, and it will be a pleasure to believe that the suns.h.i.+ne was brighter because of my brief stay in it. I can forget some of the darkness around me in future, in thinking of these two circ.u.mstances."

They had reached Thompson Benton's gate by this time, and, the invitation having been extended, Dorris walked into the house. The master was not due for an hour, so Dorris remained until he came, excusing himself by the reflection that he would never see the girl again, and that he was ent.i.tled to this pleasure because of the sacrifice he had resolved to make.

It was the same old story over again; Allan Dorris was desperately in love with Annie Benton, but she must not be in love with him, for he was dangerous, and whether this was true or not, his companion did not believe it. He told in a hundred ways, though in language which might have meant any one of a hundred things, that she was his dream come true, and of the necessity which existed for him to avoid her.

Occasionally he would forget to be grave, and make sport of himself, and laugh at what he had been saying; and at these times Annie Benton was convinced more than ever that he was not a dangerous man, as he said, for there was an honest gentility in his manner, and a gentle respect for her womanhood in everything he did; therefore she listened attentively to what he said, saying but little herself, as he requested.

Although he made love to her in many ingenious ways, and moved Annie Benton as she had never been moved before, he did not so intend it.

Could his motives have been impartially judged, that must have been the verdict; but while he knew that his love was out of place in the keeping of the girl, he could not resist the temptation of giving it to her, and then asking her to refuse it.

Several times Annie Benton attempted to speak, but he held up his hand as a warning.

"Don't say anything that you will regret," he said. "Let me do that; I am famous for it. I never talked ten minutes in my life that I didn't say something that caused me regret for a year. But I will never regret anything I have said to you, for I have only made a confession which has been at my tongue's end for years. I have known you all my life; you know nothing of me, and care less, therefore let it be as I suggest."

"But just a word," the girl insisted. "You do not understand what I would say--"

"I don't know what you would say, but I can imagine what a lady like you _should_ say under such circ.u.mstances, and I beg the favor of your silence. Let me imagine what I please, since that can be of little consequence to you."

There was a noise at the front door, and old Thompson came in. Dorris bowed himself out, followed by a scowl, and as he walked along toward his own house he thought that his resolution to see Annie Benton no more would at least save him from a quarrel with her father.

CHAPTER XII.

RUINED BY KINDNESS.

John Bill, editor of the Davy's Bend _Triumph_, was ruined by a railroad pa.s.s. When he taught school over in the bottoms, on the other side of the river, and was compelled to pay his fare when he travelled, he seldom travelled, and therefore put his money carefully away, but when he invested his savings in the _Triumph_, and the railroad company sent him an annual pa.s.s, he made up for lost time, and travelled up and down the road almost constantly, all his earnings being required to pay his expenses.

A day seldom pa.s.sed that John Bill did not get off or on a train at the Davy's Bend station, carrying an important looking satchel in his right hand, and an umbrella in his left, and though he imagined that this coming and going gave the people an idea of his importance, he was mistaken, for they knew he had no business out of the town, and very little in it: therefore they made fun of him, as they did of everything else, for the Davy's Bend people could appreciate the ridiculous in spite of their many misfortunes. They knew enough, else they could not have been such shrewd fault-finders, and they had rather extensive knowledge of everything worldly except a knowledge of the ways of Capital, which was always avoiding them; but this was not astonis.h.i.+ng, since Capital had never lived among them and been subject to their keen scrutiny.

When an event was advertised to take place on the line of road over which his pa.s.s was accepted, John Bill was sure to be present, for he argued that, in order to report the news correctly, he must be on the ground in person; but usually he remained away so long, and gave the subject in hand such thorough attention, that he concluded on his return that the people had heard of the proceedings, and did not write them up, though he frequently a.s.serted with much earnestness that no editor in that country gave the news as much personal attention as he did.

Still, John Bill claimed to be worth a good deal of money. There was no question at all, he frequently argued, that his business and goodwill were worth fifteen thousand dollars--any man would be willing to pay that for the _Triumph_ and its goodwill, providing he had the money; therefore, deducting his debts, which amounted to a trifle of eleven hundred dollars on his material, in the shape of an enc.u.mbrance, and a floating indebtedness of half as much more, he was still worth a little more than thirteen thousand dollars. The people said that everything in his office was not worth half the amount of the enc.u.mbrance, and that his goodwill could not be very valuable, since his business did not pay its expenses; but John Bill could prove that the people had never treated him justly, therefore they were likely to misrepresent the facts in his case.

There was a mortgage, as any one who cared to examine the records might convince himself, but it was a very respectable mortgage, and had been extended from time to time, as the office changed hands, for fifteen years past. It had been owned by all the best men in the neighborhood; but while a great many transfers were noted thereon, no credits appeared, so John Bill was no worse than the rest of them. The former parties of the first part had intended paying off the trifling amount in a few weeks, and thereby become free to act as they pleased; John Bill had the same intention concerning the doc.u.ment, therefore it was no great matter after all.

Besides, there were the accounts. He had a book full of them, and was always showing it to those who bothered him for money. The accounts were all against good men; a little slow, perhaps, but good, nevertheless, and the accounts should be figured in an estimate of John Bill's affairs, which would add a few thousands more to the total.

It was a little curious, though, that most of the men whose names appeared on John Bill's ledger had accounts against John Bill, and while he frequently turned to their page and showed their balances, they also turned to John Bill's page in _their_ ledgers, and remarked that there was no getting anything out of him. Thompson Benton had been heard to say that each of these men were afraid to present their bills first, fearing that the others would create a larger one; so the accounts ran on from year to year. But whoever was in the right, it is certain that the accounts were a great comfort to John Bill, for he frequently looked them over as a miser might count his money.

John Bill was certain the people of Davy's Bend were ungrateful. He had helped them and their town in a thousand ways, and spent his time (or that part of it not devoted to using his pa.s.s) in befriending them; but did they appreciate him? They did not; this may be set down as certain, for if the editor had put them in the way of making money, they were thoroughly ungrateful. Indeed, the people went so far as to declare that John Bill was the ungrateful one, nor were they backward in saying so.

They had taken his paper, and helped him in every way possible, but he did not appreciate it; so they accused each other, and a very uncomfortable time they had of it. But though John Bill claimed to be always helping the people, and though the people claimed that they had done a great deal for John Bill, the facts were that neither John Bill nor the people gave substantial evidence of any very great exertions in each other's behalf, so there must have been a dreadful mistake out somewhere. Likewise, they quarrelled as to which had tried to bring the greater number of inst.i.tutions to the town; but as to the inst.i.tutions actually secured, there were none to quarrel over, so there was peace in this direction.