 | CHAPTER XX.
MISS WALTON MADE OF ORDINARY CLAY. Opening a chestnut burr |  |
20. CHAPTER XX.
MISS WALTON MADE OF ORDINARY CLAY.
WHEN Gregory awoke, the sun had sunk bebehind
the mountains that he could not even
look toward now without a shudder, and the landscape,
as seen from the window, was growing obscure
in the early dusk of an autumn evening. But had
the window opened on a vista in paradise he would
not have looked without, for the one object of all
the world most attractive to him was present. Annie
sat near the hearth with some light crochet-work
in her hands. She had evidently been out for
a walk, for she was drying her feet on the fender.
How trim and cunning they looked, peeping from
under the white edge of her skirt, and what a pretty
picture she made sitting there in the fire-light. The
outline of her figure surely did not suggest the
“ethereal heroine,” but rather the presiding genius
in a happy home, in which the element of comfort
abounded. She looked as if she would be a sweet-tempered,
helpful companion, in the every-day cares
and duties of a busy life:
For human nature's daily food.
Wordsworth.
“How dark and lustrous her eyes are in the fire-light,”
Gregory thought. “It seems as if another
and more genial fire were burning in them. What can
she be thinking of, that such happy, dreamy smiles
are flitting across her face? If I had such a hearth
as that, and such a good angel beside it to receive
me after the day's work was over, I believe I could
become at least a man, if not a Christian,” and he
sighed so deeply that Annie looked hastily up, and
encountered his wistful gaze.
“What a profound remark you just made,” she
said. “What could have led to it?”
“You.”
“I do not think that I am an object to sigh over.
I'm perfectly well, I thank you, and have had my
dinner.”
“You have no idea what a pretty picture you
made.”
“Yes, in this poor light, and your disordered
imagination. But did you sigh on that account?”
“No, but because to me it is only a picture—one
that shall have the chief place in the gallery of my
memory. In a few days I shall be in my cheerless
bachelor apartments, with nothing but a dusty register
in the place of this home-like hearth.”
“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 who 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 passing,
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
circumstances. 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
he 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 passed away in light and cheerful
conversation. As if by common consent, no
allusion was made to the scenes on the mountain, 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. Her father insisted on her taking his
easy-chair, and Walter 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 commenced
pacing 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
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 have torn you to pieces and they have appeared
blameless. 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 gratitude a
hundred-fold, sir,” he said earnestly.
Annie looked up at him with a startled, deprecatory
air. “No, Miss Walton,” he said, answering her
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 actually occurred, softening and 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.”
Gregory felt that he would like the privilege of
showing his weakness in the same way.
“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.
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 would scarcely do you justice, as you feared.
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 his humility to the rebuke.
“At the same time,” continued Mr. Walton, “it
was manly in you to frankly state the case to me as
you have, for you knew that you might shield yourself
behind Annie's silence.”
“It was simply your right to know it,” said Walter
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
her manner and words that her guilty life is a crushing
burden. It must be a terrible thing to a woman
capable of good (as she is), and wishing 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 term. He
had no small vanity, and understood her kindness.
She was trying to do him good as she would 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, before her, had rebuked
his lack of principle. He had asserted that his
nature was like the vile weed, and he had proved the
same 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
friendship?
He was learning the lesson that wrong sooner or
later will bring its own punishment, and that the
little experiment that he entered upon as a relief
from ennui, might become the impassable 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 refuge in sleep 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 day was mild, so that he could
take rests in sunny nooks, and thus he spent most
of the day by himself. His conscience was awakening,
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,
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 noble impulses as the majority, and that
circumstances 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 few days, 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
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 pass 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 passed up to
his room. For the first time he found it chilly and
fireless. It had evidently been forgotten, and he
felt himself forgotten and 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 God and
man.
But a process had commenced in Annie's mind
that would have surprised him much. Unconsciously
as yet, even to herself, she was disproving his superior
“clay” theory. Though carefully trained, and
right, still she was a true daughter of Eve, and was
often betrayed by human weakness. She had not
the small, habitual vanity of some pretty women,
who take admiration and flattery as their due, and
miss it as they do their meals; still there was pride
and vanity in her composition, and the causes that
would naturally develop them were now actively at
work. She considered herself plain and unattractive
personally, and so she was to the careless glance
of a stranger, but she speedily became beautiful, or
what was better, fascinating, to those who learned to
know her well. All are apt to know their strong
points better than their weak ones, and Annie had
no little confidence in her power to win the attention
and then the respect and regard of those whose
eyes turned away indifferently after the first perception
of her lack of beauty. She did not use this
power as the coquette, but still she exulted in it, and
liked to employ it where she could innocently. She
was amused with Gregory's sublime indifference at
first, and thought she could soon change that condition
of his mind. She did not know that she was
successful beyond her expectation or wishes.
But while she rejected and was not affected by the
fulsome flattery with which he at first plied her, detecting
in it the ring of insincerity, she had noted, with
not a little self-gratulation, how speedily she had
made him conscious of her existence and developed
a growing interest. She knew nothing of his deliberate
plot against her, nor its motive. Therefore his
everything by saying:
“He has lived too long in Paris.”
Still it is justice to her to say that, while from
the natural love of power existing in every breast,
she had her own little complacencies, and often times
of positive pride and self-glorification, yet she struggled
and prayed against such tendencies, and in the
main she earnestly sought to use the influence she
gained over others, for their own good.
But of late there had been enough to turn a
stronger head than hers. Gregory's homage and
admiration was now sincere, and she knew it, and it
was no trifling thing to win such unbounded esteem
from a man who had seen so much of the world and
was so critical. “He may be bad himself, but he
well knows what is good and noble,” was a thought
that often recurred to her. Then, in a moment of
sudden and terrible peril she had been able to master
her strong natural timidity, and be true to conscience,
and while she thanked God sincerely, she
also was more and more inclined to take a great deal
of credit to herself. Gregory's words kept repeating
themselves: “You are made of different clay from
others.” While she knew that this was not true as
he meant it, still the tempter whispered, You are
naturally, and you have trained yourself into a real
and great superiority over many others. Her father's
intense look of pride and pleasure when he first
learned of her fortitude, and his strong words of
thankfulness, she took as incense to herself, rather
curious, sympathizing people, who continued to feed
her aroused pride by making her out a sort of heroine.
Chief of all she was complacent in the consciousness
of so generously shielding Gregory when,
if she told the whole story, she, in contrast with him,
would appear to far greater advantage.
Altogether, her opinion of Annie Walton was
rising with dangerous rapidity; and the feeling grew
strong within her that, having coped successfully
with such temptations, she had little to fear from the
future. And this feeling of overweening self-confidence
and self-satisfaction was beginning to tinge
her manner. Not that she would ever show it offensively.
Annie was too much of a lady for that. But
at the supper table that evening she gave evident
signs of elation and excitement. She talked more
than usual, and was often very positive in matters
where Gregory knew her to be wrong; and she was
also a little dictatorial. At the same time the excitement
made her conversation more brilliant and
pointed, and as Gregory skilfully drew her out, he
was suprised at the force and freshness of her mind.
And yet there was something that jarred unpleasantly—a
lack of the sincere simplicity and self-forgetfulness
which were her usual characteristics. He
had never known her to use the pronoun “I” with
such distinctness and emphasis before. Still all this
would not have seemed strange to him in another,
but it did in contrast with herself.
She did not notice the cloud upon his brow, or
was too much preoccupied with herself for her customary
quick sympathy for the moods of others.
She made no inquiries as to how he had spent the
day, and seemingly had forgotten him as completely
as he had been absorbed in her. He saw with a
deeper regret than he could understand that, except
when he awakened her pity by suffering or entertained
her by his conversation as any stranger might,
he apparently had no hold upon her thoughts.
After supper, in answer to the children's demand
for stories, she said almost petulantly that
she was “too tired,” and permitted Aunt Eulie to
take them with sorrowful faces away to bed earlier
than usual.
“I need a little rest and quiet,” she said.
Gregory was eager for further conversation, and
was willing even that it should turn upon religious
topics, in order that he might obtain some idea how
mercy would tinge her judgment of him if she should
ever come to know the worst, but she suddenly
seemed disinclined to talk, or give him any attention
at all.
Taking the arm-chair he usually occupied, and
leaving the other for her father, she leaned back luxuriously
and gazed dreamily into the fire. Mr. Walton
politely offered Gregory his. Then Annie, suddenly,
as if awakening, rose and said:
“Excuse me,” and was about to vacate.
But Gregory insisted upon her keeping it, saying,
“You need it more than I, after the unusual fatigues
ache in my bones from my cold has quite disappeared.”
She readily yielded to his wish, and again appeared
to see something in the fire that quite
absorbed her. After receiving a few courteous
monosyllables he seemingly busied himself with a
magazine.
Suddenly she said to her father:
“Are you sure the steamer is due to-day?”
He replied with a nod and a smile that Gregory
did not understand, and he imagined that she also
gave him a quick look of vexed perplexity.
She did, for she expected her lover, Mr. Hunting,
who had been abroad on a brief business visit, by
that steamer, and hoped that in a day or two he
would make his appearance. Conscious of the bitter
enmity that Gregory for some unknown reason
cherished toward him, she dreaded their meeting.
As Gregory watched her furtively, her brow
contracted into a positive frown. The following
thoughts were the cause:
“It will be exceedingly stiff and awkward to have
two guests in the house who are scarcely on speaking
terms, and unless I can make something like peace,
it will be unendurable. Moreover, I don't want any
strangers around, much less this one, while Hunting
is here.”
Thus in the secret of her soul, Annie's hospitality
gave out utterly, and in spirit she had incontinently
turned an unwelcome guest out of doors. Now
be used effectively, all her Christian and kindly purposes
were forgotten in the self-absorption that had
suddenly mastered her.
The evening was a painful one to Gregory. His
sense of loneliness was deepened, and nowhere is
such a feeling stronger than at a fireside where one
feels that he has no right or part. Mr. Walton was
occupied that evening with some business papers.
He had not a thought of discourtesy toward his
guest. Indeed, in the perfection of hospitality, he
had adopted Gregory so completely into his household
that he felt that he could treat him as one
of the family. And yet Mr. Walton was also secretly
uneasy at the prospect of entertaining hostile
guests, and, with his better knowledge of the world,
was not so sure that peace between them could be
made in an hour.
The disposition of those around us often creates
an atmosphere, nothing tangible but something felt,
and the impression on Gregory's mind, that he belonged
not to this household, but to the outside world
—that the circle of their lives did not embrace him,
and that his visit might soon come to an end without
much regret on their part—was not without cause.
And yet consciously they would have failed in no
duty of hospitality had he staid for weeks.
But never before had Gregory so felt his isolation.
He had but few relatives, and they were not
congenial. His life abroad, and neglect, had made
them comparative strangers. But here, in the home
those who might become equally loved with it.
In a dim, obscure way the impression was growing
upon him that his best chance for life and happiness
still centred in the place where he had once known
true life and happiness.
Annie Walton seemed to him the embodiment
of life. She was governed and sustained by a principle
that he could not understand, and which from
his soul he was beginning to covet.
His good father and mother were like old Mr.
Walton. Their voyage of life was nearly over as
he remembered them, and they were entering the
quiet, placid waters of the harbor. Whether they
had reached their haven of rest through storm and
temptation, he did not now know, but felt that they
never could have had the unfortunate experience of
himself, who was now threatened with utter wreck.
They belonged to his happier, yet vanished past,
which could never return.
But Annie unexpectedly awakened hope for the
present and future. This eager-eyed, joyous girl,
looking forward to the life he dreaded with almost a
child's delight, this patient woman already taking
up the cares and burdens of her lot with cheerful
acceptance—this strong, high-principled maiden,
facing and mastering temptation in the spirit of olden
time—this daughter of nature was full of inspiration.
Never had he found her society a weariness. On
the contrary, she had stirred his slow, feeble pulse,
and revived his jaded mind, from the first. Her
breath from an oasis to one perishing in the desert.
But chiefly had her kindness, delicacy, and generosity
when in his moral and physical weakness he had
been completely at her mercy, won his deepest
gratitude. Also he felt that in all his after life he
could never even think of her touch upon his aching
temples without an answering thrill of his whole
nature that appeared to have an innate sympathy
with hers.
And yet the exasperating mystery of it all!
While she was becoming the one source of life and
hope for him—while his very soul cried out for her
friendship and sisterly regard (as he would then have
said), she seemed, in her preoccupation, unconscious
of his existence, and he instinctively felt that she
would bid him “good-by” on the following day,
perhaps, with a sense of relief, and the current of her
life flow on as smoothly and brightly as if he had
never caused a passing agitation.
With gnawing remorse he inwardly cursed his
evil life and unworthy character, for these he
believed formed the hopeless gulf that separated
them.
“It is the same,” he said, in his exaggerated way,
“as if a puddle should mirror the star just above it,
and becoming enamored, should wish it to fall and
be quenched in its foul depths.”
But he did himself great wrong; for in the fact
that Annie so attracted him, he proved himself possessing
large capabilities of good.
But he could not bear to see her sitting there so
quietly forgetful of him, and so made several vain
attempts during the evening to draw her into conversation.
Finding her disinclined to talk, he at last
ventured to ask her to sing. With something like
coldness she replied:
“Really, Mr. Gregory, I am not in the mood for
it this evening; besides, I am greatly fatigued.”
What a careless, indifferent shrug he usually gave
when fair ladies denied his requests! Now, for some
unaccountable reason he flushed deeply and a sharp
pain came into his heart. But he only said:”
“Pardon me, Miss Walton, for not seeing this
myself. But you know that I am selfishness embodied,
and your former good nature leads me to
presume.”
Annie gave him a hurried smile, as she answered,
“Another time I will try to keep up my character
better;” and then she was absorbed again in a picture
among the hickory coals.
Like many who live in the country and are much
alone, she was given to fits of abstraction and long
reveries. She had no idea how the time was passing,
and meant to exert herself before the evening
was over for the benefit of her father and guest. But
her lively imagination could not endure interruption
till it had completed some scenes connected with
him she hoped so soon to see. Moreover, as we
have seen, the tendency to self-absorption had been
developing rapidly.
After the last rebuff, Gregory was very quiet, and
taken longer walks than usual and needed rest.
Annie awakened, as if out of a dream, with a pang
of self-reproach, and said:
“I have been a wretched hostess this evening.
I hope you will forgive me. The fact is, I've been
talked out to-day.”
“And I had not the wit to entertain and interest
you, so I need forgiveness more. Good night.”
Mr. Walton looked up from his business papers
and smiled genially over his spectacles, and then was
as absorbed as before.
Annie sat down again with a vague sense of discontent.
With their guest, her dreams also had
gone, and she became conscious that she had treated
him with a neglect that even seemed rude, and he
had borne it in a spirit different from that which he
usually showed. But she petulantly said to herself,
“I can't always be exerting myself for him as if he
were a sick child.”
But conscience replied, “You have so much to
make you happy, and he so little. You are on the
eve of a great joy, and you might have given him
one more pleasant evening.”
But she met these accusations with a harshness
all unlike herself. “It's his own fault that he is not
happy. He had no business to spoil his life.”
“Yes,” retorted conscience, “but you have promised
and purposed to help him find the true life, and
now you wish him out of the way, and have lost one
of your best and perhaps your last opportunity, for
she felt that she had spent a very selfish
and profitless evening.
For some reason she did not feel like staying to
prayers with her father and Miss Eulie, who now
came in, but, printing a hasty kiss on Mr. Walton's
cheek, said:
“Good night. I'm tired, and going to bed.”
Even in her own room there was a malign influence
at work that made her devotion formal and
brief, and she went to sleep, “out of sorts.”
| CHAPTER XX.
MISS WALTON MADE OF ORDINARY CLAY. Opening a chestnut burr | |