University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
WAS IT AN ACCIDENT?

PUTTING on a light overcoat for the morning air
was sharp and bracing, Walter soon found himself
in the old square garden. Though its glory was
decidedly on the wane, it was as yet unnipped by
the frost. It had a neatness and order of its own
that were quite unlike those where nature is in entire
subserviency to art. Indeed, it looked very
much as he remembered it in the past, and he welcomed
its unchanged aspect. He strolled to many
other remembered boyish haunts, and it seemed as
if the very lichens and mosses grew in the same
places and nature had stood still and awaited his
return.

And yet every familiar object chided him for
being so changed, and he began to find more of
pain than pleasure as this contrast between himself
and what he had been, and might have been, was
constantly forced upon him.

“Oh! that I had never left this place,” he exclaimed
bitterly. “It would have been better to
have stayed here and drudged as a day laborer.
What has that career out in the world to which I
looked forward so ardently amounted to? The

present is disappointment and self-disgust, the future
an indefinite region of fears and forebodings,
and even the happy past is becoming a bitter mockery
by reminding me of what can never be again.”

Wearied and despondent, he moodily returned
to the house and threw himself on a lounge in the
parlor where a smouldering wood fire upon the
hearth softened the air to summer temperature.
The heat was grateful to his chilled, bloodless body
and gave him a luxurious sense of physical comfort,
and he muttered:

“I had about purposed to leave this place with
its memories that are growing into torment, but I
suppose it would be the same anywhere else. I am
too weak and ill to face new scenes and discomfort.
A little animal enjoyment and bodily respite from
pain seem about all that is left to me of existence, and
I think I can find these here better than elsewhere.
If I am expected however, to fall under the management
of the daughter of the house on the terms blurted
out by that fidgety nephew of hers, I will fly for
my life. A plague on him! His restlessness makes
me nervous. If I could endure a child at all, the
blue-eyed little girl would make a pretty toy.”

Sounds from the sitting-room back of the parlor
now caught his attention, and listening he soon
became aware that Miss Walton was teaching the
children.

“She has just the voice for a `schoolmarm'” he
thought—“quick, clear cut, and decided.”

If he had not given way to unreasonable prejudice

he might also have noted that there was nothing
harsh or querulous.

“She doubtless thinks herself the personification
of goodness with her management and love of nature.
I suppose I shall be well lectured before I get away.
I had a foretaste of it this morning. `Drawbacks of
city life,' forsooth! She no doubt regards me as a
result of these disadvantages. But if she should come
to deem it her mission to convert or reform me,
then will be lost my small remnant of peace and
comfort.”

But weakness and weariness soon inclined him
to sleep. Miss Walton's voice sounded far away.
Then it passed into his dream as Miss Bently's chiding
him affectedly for his wayward tendencies; again
it was explaining that conscientious young lady's
“sense of duty” in view of Mr. Grobb's offer, and
even in his sleep his face darkened with pain and
wrath.

Just then, school hours being over, Miss Walton
came into the parlor. For a moment, as she stood
by the fire, she did not notice its unconscious occupant.
Then seeing him, she was about to noiselessly
leave the room, when the expression of his face
arrested her steps.

If Annie Walton's eyes suggested the probability
of “sudden gusts,” they also at times announced a
warm, kind heart, for as she looked at him now her
face instantly softened to pity.

“Good he is not,” she thought, “but he evidently
suffers in his evil. Something is blighting his life,

and what can blight a life save evil? Perhaps I had
better change my purposed crusade against his vanity
and cynicism to a kind, sisterly effort toward
making him a better and therefore a happier man.
It will soon come out in conversation that I have
long been the same as engaged to another, and this
will relieve me of absurd suspicions of designs upon
him. If I could win a friendly confidence on his
part, I'm sure I could tell him some wholesome
truths, for even an enemy could scarcely look on
that face without relenting.”

There was nothing slow or cumbrous about Annie.
These thoughts had flashed through her mind
during the brief moment that her eyes softened from
surprise into sympathy as they caught the expression
of Gregory's face. Then fearing to disturb him,
she passed out to her wonted morning duties with
silent tread.

How seemingly accidental was that visit to the
parlor! Its motive indefinite and forgotten. Apparently
it was but a trivial episode of an uneventful
day, involving no greater catastrophe than the
momentary rousing of a sleeper who would doze
again. But what day can we with certainty call
uneventful, and what episode trivial? Those half-aimless,
purposeless steps of Annie Walton into
the quiet parlor might lead to results that would
radically change the endless future to several
lives.

In her womanly, pitying nature, had not God
sent his angel? If a viewless “ministering spirit,”

as the sinful man's appointed guardian, was present,
as many believe is true of every one, how truly he
must have welcomed this unselfish human companionship
in his loving labor to save life; for only they
who rescue from sin truly save life.

And yet the sleeper, even in his dreams, evidently
was at war with himself, the world, and God.
He was an example of the truth that good comes
from without and not within us. It is heaven stooping
to men; heaven's messengers sent to us; truth
quickened in our minds by heavenly influence even
as sunlight and rain awaken into beautiful life the
seeds hidden in the soil; and above all, impulses direct
from Cod, that steal into our hearts as the south
wind penetrates ice-bound gardens in spring.

But, alas! multitudes like Walter Gregory blind
their eyes and steel their hearts against such influences.
God and those allied to Him longed to
bring the healing of faith and love to his wounded
spirit. He scowled back his answer, and, as he then
felt, would shrink with morbid sensitiveness and dislike
from the kindest and most delicate presentation
of the transforming truth. But the Divine love is
ever seeking to win our attention by messengers innumerable:
now by the appalling storm, again by a
summer sunset; now by an awful providence, again
by a great joy; at times by stern prophets and
teachers, but more often by the gentle human agencies
of which Annie was the type, as with pitying
face she bent over the worn and jaded man of the
world and hoped and prayed that she might be able

to act the part of a true sister toward him. Thorny
and guarded was every avenue to his heart; and yet
her feminine tact, combined with the softening and
purifying influence of his old home, might gain her
words acceptance where the wisest and most eloquent
would plead in vain.

After dinner he again hastened forth for a walk,
his purpose being to avoid company, for he was so
moody and morbid, so weak, nervous, and irritable,
that the thought of meeting and decorously conversing
with those whose lives and character were a
continued reproach was intolerable. Then he had
the impression that the “keen-eyed, plain-featured
Miss Walton,” as he caricatured her in his mind,
would surely commence discoursing on moral and
religious subjects if he gave her a chance; and he
feared that if she did he would say or do something
very rude and confirm the bad impression that he
was sure of having already made. If he could have
strolled into his club, into an atmosphere laden with
the fumes of wine and tobacco, and among groups
engaged with cards, papers, and city gossip, he
would have felt quite at home. Ties formed at such
a place are not very strong or tender as a usual thing,
and the manner of the world can isolate the members
and their real life completely, even when the
rooms are thronged. As Walter grew worn and
thin and his pallor increased, as he smoked and
brooded more and more apart with his hat drawn
down over his eyes, his companions would shrug
their shoulders significantly and whisper:

“It looks as if Gregory would go under soon.
Something's the matter with him.”

At first good natured men would say, “Come
Gregory, take a hand with us,” but when he complied
it was with such a kill-joy, listless manner that
they were sorry they had asked him. At last, beyond
mere, passing courtesies, they had come to
leave him very much alone; and in his unnatural and
perverted state this was just what he most desired.
His whole being had become a diseased, sensitive
nerve, shrinking most from any effort toward his
improvement even as a finger pointed at a festering
sore causes anticipating agonies.

At the club he would be let alone, but these
good people would “take an interest in him,” and
might even “talk religion,” and probe with questions
and surmises. If they did, he knew, from what
he had already seen of them, that they would try to
do it delicately and kindly, but he felt that the most
considerate efforts would be like the surgical instruments
of the dark ages. He needed good decisive,
heroic treatment. But who would have the courage
and skill to give it? Who cared enough for him to
take the trouble?

The Divine Physician is only equal to such cases.
But Christ still comes to earth in every one of his
true followers—“I in you.” Not merely with eyes
of human pity had Annie Walton looked upon his
sin-marred visage that morning. The Divine personality,
enthroned in the depths of her soul and
permeating her life, looked commiserately forth

also. Could demons glare from human eyes and
God not smile from them?

As Annie thought much of him after her stolen
glance in the morning, she longed to do that which
he dreaded she would try to do—attempt his conversion.
Not that she cared for him personally, nor
had grown sentimental or interested in his Byronic
style of wretchedness. So far from it, her happy
and healthful nature was repelled by his diseased and
morbid one. She found him what girls call a “disagreeable
man.” But God dwelt in her to that degree
that she yearned toward a sinning, suffering soul,
found in any guise. It was not in her woman's
heart, filled with heaven's spirit, to pass by one the
other side and leave sin-robbed-and-wounded creatures
to their fate.