Opening a Chestnut Burr Part 26

"Well then, you should know from my touch that I am not sitting here telling fibs. If I should bathe your head with a wooden hand, wouldn't you know it?"

"What an odd simile! I cannot understand you." "It is not necessary that you should, but do not wrong me by doubting me again."

"I have done nothing but wrong you, Miss Walton."

"I'm not conscious of it, so you needn't worry, and I a.s.sure you I find it a pleasure to do you good."

"Miss Walton, you are the essence of goodness."

"Oh, no, no; why say of a creature what is only true of G.o.d? Mr.

Gregory, you are very extravagant in your language."

A scowl darkened his face, and he said, moodily, "G.o.d seems to me the essence of cruelty."

"'Seems, seems!' An hour since I seemed a torment, and you were driving me away."

"Yes, but you soon proved yourself a kind, helpful, pitiful friend. I once thought my cheek would flame with anger even if I were dying, should I be regarded as an object of pity. But you, better than any one, know that I am one."

"I, better than any one, know that you are not, in the sense you mean."

"Come, Miss Walton, you cannot be sincere now. Do you think I can ever forget the miserable scene of Monday evening, when you placed yourself beside the martyrs and I sank down among the cowards of any age? I reached the bottom of the only perdition I believe in. I have lost my self-respect."

"Which I trust G.o.d will help you regain by showing you the only sure and safe ground on which self-respect can be maintained. Much that is called self-respect is nothing but pride. But, Mr. Gregory, injustice to one's self is as wrong as injustice to another. Answer me honestly this question. Did you act that evening only from fear--because you have it not in you to face danger? or did you promise secrecy because you felt the man's crime was none of your business, and supposed I would take the same view?"

Gregory started up and looked at her with a face all aglow with honest, grateful feeling, and said, "G.o.d knows the latter is the truth."

"And I know it too. I knew it then."

"But the world could never be made to see it in that light."

"Now pride speaks. Self-respect does not depend upon the opinion of the world. The world has nothing to do with the matter. You certainly do not expect I am going to misrepresent you before it."

He bent a look upon her such as she had never sustained before. It was the look of a man who had discovered something divine and precious beyond words. It was a feeling such as might thrill one who was struggling in darkness, and, as he supposed, sinking in the deep sea, but whose feet touched something which seemed to sustain him. The thought, "I can trust her--she is true," came to him at that time with such a blessed power to inspire hope and give relief that for a moment he could not speak. Then he began, "Miss Walton, I cannot find words--"

"Do not find them," she interrupted, laughingly. "See, your temples are beginning to throb again, and I am a sorry nurse, a true disciple of Mrs. Gamp, to let you excite yourself. Lie down, sir, at once, and let your thoughts dwell the next half-hour on your breakfast. You have much reason for regret that the dainty little tidbits that I first prepared are spoiled by this time. I doubt whether I can do so well again."

"I do not wish any breakfast. Please do not leave me yet."

"It makes no difference what you wish. The idea of an orthodox physician consulting the wishes of his patient! My practical skill sees your need of breakfast."

"Have you had any yourself?" he asked, again starting up, and looking searchingly at her.

"Well, I have had a cup of coffee," she replied, coloring a little.

"What a brute I am!" he groaned.

"In that charge upon yourself you strongly a.s.sert the possession of an animal nature, and therefore of course the need of a breakfast."

"May I be choked by the first mouthful if I touch anything before I know you have had your own."

"What an awful abjuration! How can you swear so before a lady, Mr.

Gregory?"

"No, it is a solemn vow."

"Then I must take my breakfast with you, for with your disposition to doubt I don't see how you can 'know' anything about it otherwise."

"That is better than I hoped. I will eat anything you bring on those conditions, if it does choke me--and I know it will."

"A fine compliment to my cooking," she retorted and laughingly left the room.

Gregory could not believe himself the haggard wretch that Mr. Walton had found two hours since. Then he was ready to welcome death as a deliverer. Insane man! As if death ever delivered any from evil but the good! But so potent had been the sweet wine of Annie's ministry that his chilled and benumbed heart was beginning to glow with a faint warmth of hope and comfort. Morbidness could no more exist in her presence than shadows on the sunny side of trees. With her full knowledge of the immediate cause of his suffering, and with her unusual tact, she had applied balm to body and spirit at the same time. The sharp, cutting agony in his head had been charmed away. The paroxysm had pa.s.sed, and the dull ache that remained seemed nothing in comparison--merely the heavy swell of the departed storm.

He forgot himself, the source of all his trouble, in thinking about Miss Walton. The plain girl, as he had at first regarded her, with a weak, untried character that he had expected to topple over by the breath of a little flattery, now seemed divinely beautiful and strong.

She reminded him of the graceful, symmetrical elm, which, though bending to the tempest, is rarely broken or uprooted.

He hardly hoped that she would give him credit for the real state of his mind which had led to his ready promise of secrecy. To the counterfeiter's wretched companion he had seemed the weakest and meanest of cowards, and if the story were generally known he would appear in the same light to the world. To his intensely proud nature this would be intolerable. And why should it not be known? If Miss Walton chose to regard his choice as one of cowardice, how could he prove, even to her, that it was not?

Moreover, his low estimate of human nature led him to believe that even Annie would use him as a dark background for her heroism; and he well knew that when such a story is once started, society's strongest tendency is to exaggerate man's pusillanimity and woman's courage. He shuddered as he saw himself growing blacker and meaner in every fireside and street corner narration of the strange tale, till at last his infamy should pa.s.s into one of the traditions of the place. A man like Gregory could not long have endured such a prospect. He would have died, either by every physical power speedily giving way under mental anguish, or by his own hand; or, if he had lived, reason would have dropped its sceptre and become the sport of wild thoughts and fancies.

Little wonder that Annie appeared an angel of light when she stood between him and such a future. The ugliest hag would have been glorified and loved in the same position. But when she did this with her own peculiar grace and tact, as a matter of justice, his grat.i.tude and admiration knew no bounds. He was in a fair way to become an idolater and worship the country girl he had once sneered at, as no pictured Madonna was ever revered even in superst.i.tious Italy. Besides placing him under personal obligation, she had, by tests certain and terrible, proved herself true and strong in a world that he believed to be, in the main, utterly false at heart. It is one of our most natural instincts to trust and lean upon something, and Annie Walton seemed one whose friendship he could value above life.

He did not even then realize, in his glad sense of relief, that in escaping the charge of cowardice he fell upon the other horn of the dilemma, namely, lack of principle--that the best explanation of his conduct admitted that he was indifferent to right and wrong, and even to the most serious crime against society, so long as he was not personally and immediately injured. He had acted on the selfish creed that a man is a fool who puts himself to serious trouble to serve the public. The fact that he did not even dream that Annie would make the n.o.ble stand she did proves how far selfishness can take a man out of his true course when he throws overboard compa.s.s and chart and lets himself drift.

But in the world's code (which was his) cowardice is the one deadly sin. His lack of anything like Christian principle was a familiar fact to him, and did not hurt him among those with whom he a.s.sociated.

Even Annie, woman-like, could more readily forgive all his faults than a display of that weakness which is most despised in a man. But she too was sufficiently familiar with the world not to be repelled or shocked by a life which, compared with all true, n.o.ble standards, was sadly lacking. And yet she was the very last one to be dazzled by a fast, brilliant man of the world. She had been too well educated for that, and had been early taught to distinguish between solid worth and mere tinsel. Her native powers of observation were strong, and her father, and mother also before she died, had given her opportunities for exercising them. Instead of mere a.s.sertions as to what was right and wrong and general lecturing on the subject, they had aimed to show her right and wrong embodied in human lives. They made her feel that G.o.d wanted her to do right for the same reason that they did, because He loved her. First in Bible narrative told in bedtime stories, then in history and biography, and finally in the experience of those around them, she had been shown the happy contrast of good, G.o.d-pleasing life with that which is selfish and wicked. So thorough and practical had been the teaching in this respect, and so impressed was she by the lesson, that she would as soon have planted in her flower-bed the seeds of tender annuals on the eve of autumn frosts, and expected bloom in chill December, as to enter upon a course that G.o.d frowns upon, and look for happiness. Her father often said, "A human being opposing G.o.d's will is like a ship beating against wind and tide to certain wreck."

An evil life appeared therefore to her a moral madness, under the malign influence of which people were like the mentally deranged who with strange perversity hate their best friends and cunningly watch for chances of self-destruction. While on one hand she shrunk from them with something of the repulsion which many feel toward the unsound in mind, on the other she cherished the deepest pity for them. Knowing how full a remedy ever exists in Him whose word and touch removed humanity's most desperate ills, it was her constant wish and effort to lead as many as possible to this Divine Friend. If she had been like many sincere but selfish religionists, she would have said of Gregory, "He is not congenial. We have nothing in common," and, wrapped in her own spiritual pleasures and pursuits, would have shunned, ignored, and forgotten him. But she chiefly saw his pressing need of help, and said to herself, "If I would be like my Master, I must help him."

Gregory at first had looked upon himself as immeasurably superior to the plain country girl. He little imagined that she at the same time had a profound pity for him, and that this fact would become his best chance for life. She had not forgotten the merciful conspiracy entered into the second evening after his arrival, but was earnestly seeking to carry out its purposes. In order to do this, she was anxious to gain his good-will and confidence, and now saw with grat.i.tude that their adventure on the mountain, that had threatened to end in death, might be the beginning of a new and happy life. She exulted over the hold she had gained upon him, not as the selfish gloat over one within their power, whom they can use for personal ends--not as the coquette smiles when another human victim is laid upon the altar of her vanity, but as the angels of heaven rejoice when there is even a chance of one sinner's repentance.

And yet Annie had no intention of "talking religion" to him in any formal way, save as the subject came up naturally; but she hoped to live it, and suggest it to him in such an attractive form that he would desire it for his own sake.

But her chief hope was in the fact that she prayed for him; and she no more expected to be unheard and unanswered than that her kind father would listen with a stony face to some earnest request of hers.

But Annie was not one to go solemnly to work to compa.s.s an event that would cause joy in heaven. She would ask one to be a Christian as she would invite a captive to leave his dungeon, or tell the sick how to be well. She saw that morbid gloom had become almost a disease with Gregory, and she proposed to cure him with sunshine.

And sunshine embodied she seemed to him as she returned, her face glowing with exercise and close acquaintance with the kitchen-range. In each hand she carried a dish, while Hannah followed with a tray on which smoked the most appetizing of breakfasts.

"Your rash vow," she said, "has caused you long waiting. I'm none of your ethereal heroines, but have a craving for solids served in quant.i.ty and variety. And while I could have soon got your breakfast it was no bagatelle to get mine."

How fresh and bright she looked saying all this! and he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "Deliver me from the ghastly creatures you call 'ethereal heroines.'"

"Indeed, sir," she retorted, "if you can't deliver yourself from them you shall have no help from me. But let us at once enter upon the solemnities, and as you have a spark of gallantry, see to it that you pay my cookery proper compliment."

"Your 'cookery,' forsooth!" said he, with something of her own light tone. "That I should find Miss Walton stealing Zibbie's laurels!"