Books: Opening a Chestnut Burr

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Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Illustration: "LET ME OPEN THE BURR FOR YOU."
Chestnut Burr. _Frontispiece._]

The Works of E. P. Roe
VOLUME FOUR

OPENING A CHESTNUT BURR

ILLUSTRATED

THIS BOOK

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO MY WIFE

PREFACE

In sending this, my fourth venture, out upon the uncertain waters of
public opinion, I shall say but few words of preface. In the past I
have received considerable well-deserved criticism from the gentlemen
of the caustic pen, but so far from having any hard feeling toward
them, I have rather wondered that they found so much to say that was
favorable. How they will judge this simple October story (if they
think it worth while to judge it at all) I leave to the future, and
turn to those for whom the book was really written.

In fancy I see them around the glowing hearth in quiet homes, such as
I have tried to describe in the following pages, and hope that this
new-comer will be welcomed for the sake of those that preceded it.
Possibly it may make friends of its own.

From widely separated parts of the country, and from almost every
class, I have received many and cordial assurances that my former
books were sources not only of pleasure, but also of help and benefit,
and I am deeply grateful for the privilege of unobtrusively entering
so many households, and saying words on that subject which is
inseparable from happiness in both worlds.

I think the purpose of the book will become apparent to the reader.
The incidents and characters are mainly imaginary.

Observation has shown me that there are many in the world, like my
hero, whose condition can be illustrated by the following lines:

Were some great ship all out of stores,
When half-way o'er the sea,
Fit emblem of too many lives,
Such vessel doomed would be.

Must there not be something fatally wrong in that scheme of life which
finds an heir of eternity weary, listless, discouraged, while yet in
the dawning of existence? It is not in perishing _things_, merely, to
give back the lost zest. But a glad zest and hopefulness might be
inspired even in the most jaded and _ennui_-cursed, were there in our
homes such simple, truthful natures as that of my heroine; and in the
sphere of quiet homes--not elsewhere--I believe that woman can best
rule and save the world.

Highland Falls, N.Y., September, 1874.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
A HERO BUT NOT HEROIC

CHAPTER II
OPENING A CHESTNUT BURR

CHAPTER III
MORBID BROODING

CHAPTER IV
HOW MISS WALTON MANAGED PEOPLE

CHAPTER V
WAS IT AN ACCIDENT?

CHAPTER VI
UNEXPECTED CHESTNUT BURRS

CHAPTER VII
A CONSPIRACY

CHAPTER VIII
WITCHCRAFT

CHAPTER IX
MISS WALTON RECOMMENDS A HOBBY

CHAPTER X
A PLOT AGAINST MISS WALTON

CHAPTER XI
A DRINKING SONG AT A PRAYER-MEETING

CHAPTER XII
FOILED IN ONE DIRECTION

CHAPTER XIII
INTERPRETING CHESTNUT BURRS

CHAPTER XIV
A WELL-MEANIN' MAN

CHAPTER XV
MISS WALTON'S DREAM

CHAPTER XVI
AN ACCIDENT IN THE MOUNTAINS

CHAPTER XVII
PROMISE OR DIE

CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE DEPTHS

CHAPTER XIX
MISS WALTON MADE OF DIFFERENT CLAY FROM OTHERS

CHAPTER XX
MISS WALTON MADE OF ORDINARY CLAY

CHAPTER XXI
PASSION AND PENITENCE

CHAPTER XXII
NOT A HEROINE BUT A WOMAN

CHAPTER XXIII
GREGORY'S FINAL CONCLUSION

CHAPTER XXIV
THE WORM-INFESTED CHESTNUT--GREGORY TELLS THE WORST

CHAPTER XXV
THE OLD HOME IN DANGER--GREGORY RETRIEVES HIMSELF

CHAPTER XXVI
CHANGES IN GREGORY

CHAPTER XXVII
PLEADING FOR LIFE AND LOVE

CHAPTER XXVIII
WHAT A LOVER COULD DO

CHAPTER XXIX
DEEPENING SHADOWS

CHAPTER XXX
KEPT FROM THE EVIL

CHAPTER XXXI
LIVE! LIVE! ANNIE'S APPEAL

CHAPTER XXXII
AT SEA--A MYSTERIOUS PASSENGER

CHAPTER XXXIII
A COLLISION AT SEA--WHAT A CHRISTIAN COULD DO

CHAPTER XXXIV
UNMASKED

CHAPTER XXXV
A CHESTNUT BURR AND A HOME

CHAPTER I

A HERO, BUT NOT HEROIC

"Shall I ever be strong in mind or body again?" said Walter Gregory,
with irritation, as he entered a crowded Broadway omnibus.

The person thus querying so despairingly with himself was a man not
far from thirty years of age, but the lines of care were furrowed so
deeply on his handsome face, that dismal, lowering morning, the first
of October, that he seemed much older. Having wedged himself in
between two burly forms that suggested thrift down town and good cheer
on the avenue, he appears meagre and shrunken in contrast. He is tall
and thin. His face is white and drawn, instead of being ruddy with
health's rich, warm blood. There is scarcely anything remaining to
remind one of the period of youth, so recently vanished; neither is
there the dignity, nor the consciousness of strength, that should come
with maturer years. His heavy, light-colored mustache and pallid face
gave him the aspect of a _blase_ man of the world who had exhausted
himself and life at an age when wisely directed manhood should be just
entering on its richest pleasures.

And such an opinion of him, with some hopeful exceptions and
indications, would be correct. The expression of irritation and self-
disgust still remaining on his face as the stage rumbles down town is
a hopeful sign. His soul at least is not surrounded by a Chinese wall
of conceit. However perverted his nature may be, it is not a shallow
one, and he evidently has a painful sense of the wrongs committed
against it. Though his square jaw and the curve of his lip indicate
firmness, one could not look upon his contracted brow and half-
despairing expression, as he sits oblivious of all surroundings,
without thinking of a ship drifting helplessly and in distress. There
are encouraging possibilities in the fact that from those windows of
the soul, his eyes, a troubled rather than an evil spirit looks out. A
close observer would see at a glance that he was not a good man, but
he might also note that he was not content with being a bad one. There
was little of the rigid pride and sinister hardness or the conceit
often seen on the faces of men of the world who have spent years in
spoiling their manhood; and the sensual phase of coarse dissipation
was quite wanting.

You will find in artificial metropolitan society many men so
emasculated that they are quite vain of being blase--fools that with
conscious superiority smile disdainfully at those still possessing
simple, wholesome tastes for things which they in their indescribable
accent characterize as a "bore."

But Walter Gregory looked like one who had early found the dregs of
evil life very bitter, and his face was like that of nature when
smitten with untimely frosts.

He reached his office at last, and wearily sat down to the routine
work at his desk. Instead of the intent and interested look with which
a young and healthy man would naturally enter on his business, he
showed rather a dogged resolution to work whether he felt like it or
not, and with harsh disregard of his physical weakness.

The world will never cease witnessing the wrongs that men commit
against each other; but perhaps if the wrongs and cruelties that
people inflict on themselves could be summed up the painful aggregate
would be much larger.

As Gregory sat bending over his writing, rather from weakness than
from a stooping habit, his senior partner came in, and was evidently
struck by the appearance of feebleness on the part of the young man.
The unpleasant impression haunted him, for having looked over his
letters he came out of his private office and again glanced uneasily
at the colorless face, which gave evidence that only sheer force of
will was spurring a failing hand and brain to their tasks.

At last Mr. Burnett came and laid his hand on his junior partner's
shoulder, saying, kindly, "Come, Gregory, drop your work. You are ill.
The strain upon you has been too long and severe. The worst is over
now, and we are going to pull through better than I expected. Don't
take the matter so bitterly to heart. I admit myself that the
operation promised well at first. You were misled, and so were we all,
by downright deception. That the swindle was imposed on us through you
was more your misfortune than your fault, and it will make you a
keener business man in the future. You have worked like a galley-slave
all summer to retrieve matters, and have taken no vacation at all. You
must take one now immediately, or you will break down altogether. Go
off to the woods; fish, hunt, follow your fancies; and the bracing
October air will make a new man of you."

"I thank you very much," Gregory began. "I suppose I do need rest. In
a few days, however, I can leave better--"

"No," interrupted Mr. Burnett, with hearty emphasis; "drop everything.
As soon as you finish that letter, be off. Don't show your face here
again till November."

"I thank you for your interest in me," said Gregory, rising. "Indeed,
I believe it would be good economy, for if I don't feel better soon I
shall be of no use here or anywhere else."

"That's it," said old Mr. Burnett, kindly. "Sick and blue, they go
together. Now be off to the woods, and send me some game. I won't
inquire too sharply whether you brought it down with lead or silver."

Gregory soon left the office, and made his arrangements to start on
his trip early the next morning. His purpose was to make a brief visit
to the home of his boyhood and then to go wherever a vagrant fancy
might lead.

The ancestral place was no longer in his family, though he was spared
the pain of seeing it in the hands of strangers. It had been purchased
a few years since by an old and very dear friend of his deceased
father--a gentleman named Walton. It had so happened that Gregory had
rarely met his father's friend, who had been engaged in business at
the West, and of his family he knew little more than that there were
two daughters--one who had married a Southern gentleman, and the
other, much younger, living with her father. Gregory had been much
abroad as the European agent of his house, and it was during such
absence that Mr. Walton had retired from business and purchased the
old Gregory homestead. The young man felt sure, however, that though a
comparative stranger himself, he would, for his father's sake, be a
welcome visitor at the home of his childhood. At any rate he
determined to test the matter, for the moment he found himself at
liberty he felt a strange and an eager longing to revisit the scenes
of the happiest portion of his life. He had meant to pay such a visit
in the previous spring, soon after his arrival from Europe, when his
elation at being made partner in the house which he so long had served
as clerk reached almost the point of happiness.

Among those who had welcomed him back was a man a little older than
himself, who, in his absence, had become known as a successful
operator in Wall Street. They had been intimate before Gregory went
abroad, and the friendship was renewed at once. Gregory prided himself
on his knowledge of the world, and was not by nature inclined to trust
hastily; and yet he did place implicit confidence in Mr. Hunting,
regarding him as a better man than himself. Hunting was an active
member of a church, and his name figured on several charities, while
Gregory had almost ceased to attend any place of worship, and spent
his money selfishly upon himself, or foolishly upon others, giving
only as prompted by impulse. Indeed, his friend had occasionally
ventured to remonstrate with him against his tendencies to
dissipation, saying that a young man of his prospects should not
damage them for the sake of passing gratification. Gregory felt the
force of these words, for he was exceedingly ambitious, and bent upon
accumulating wealth and at the same time making a brilliant figure in
business circles.

In addition to the ordinary motives which would naturally lead him to
desire such success he was incited by a secret one more powerful than
all the others combined.

Before going abroad, when but a clerk, he had been the favored suitor
of a beautiful and accomplished girl. Indeed the understanding between
them almost amounted to an engagement, and he revelled in a
passionate, romantic attachment at an age when the blood is hot, the
heart enthusiastic, and when not a particle of worldly cynicism and
adverse experience had taught him to moderate his rose-hued
anticipations. She seemed the embodiment of goodness, as well as
beauty and grace, for did she not repress his tendencies to be a
little fast? Did she not, with more than sisterly solicitude, counsel
him to shun certain florid youth whose premature blossoming indicated
that they might early run to seed? and did he not, in consequence, cut
Guy Bonner, the jolliest fellow he had ever known? Indeed, more than
all, had she not ventured to talk religion to him, so that for a time
he had regarded himself as in a very "hopeful frame of mind," and had
been inclined to take a mission-class in the same school with herself?
How lovely and angelic she had once appeared, stooping in elegant
costume from her social height to the little ragamuffins of the street
that sat gaping around her! As he gazed adoringly, while waiting to be
her resort home, his young heart had swelled with the impulse to be
good and noble also.

But one day she caused him to drop out of his roseate clouds. With
much sweetness and resignation, and with appropriate sighs, she said
that "it was her painful duty to tell him that their intimacy must
cease--that she had received an offer from Mr. Grobb, and that her
parents, and indeed all her friends, had urged her to accept him. She
had been led to feel that they with their riper experience and
knowledge of life knew what was best for her, and therefore she had
yielded to their wishes and accepted the offer." She was beginning to
add, in a sentimental tone, that "had she only followed the impulses
of her heart"--when Gregory, at first too stunned and bewildered to
speak, recovered his senses and interrupted with, "Please don't speak
of your heart, Miss Bently. Why mention so small a matter? Go on with
your little transaction by all means. I am a business man myself, and
can readily understand your motives;" and he turned on his heel and
strode from the room, leaving Miss Bently ill at ease.

The young man's first expression of having received, as it were, a
staggering blow, and then his bitter satire, made an impression on her
cotton-and-wool nature, and for a time her proceedings with Mr. Grobb
did not wear the aspect in which they had been presented by her
friends. But her little world so confidently and continually
reiterated the statement that she was making a "splendid match" that
her qualms vanished, and she felt that what all asserted must be true,
and so entered on the gorgeous preparations as if the wedding were all
and the man nothing.

It is the custom to satirize or bitterly denounce such girls, but
perhaps they are rather to be pitied. They are the natural products of
artificial society, wherein wealth, show, and the social eminence
which is based on dress and establishment are held out as the prizes
of a woman's existence. The only wonder is that so much heart and
truth assert themselves among those who all their life have seen
wealth practically worshipped, and worth, ungilded, generally ignored.
From ultra-fashionable circles a girl is often seen developing into
the noblest womanhood; while narrow, mercenary natures are often found
where far better things might have been expected. If such girls as
Miss Bently could only be kept in quiet obscurity, like a bale of
merchandise, till wanted, it would not be so bad; but some of them are
such brilliant belles and incorrigible coquettes that they are like
certain Wall Street speculators who threaten to "break the street" in
making their own fortunes.

Some natures can receive a fair lady's refusal with a good-natured
shrug, as merely the result of a bad venture, and hope for better luck
next time; but to a greater number this is impossible, especially if
they are played with and deceived. Walter Gregory pre-eminently
belonged to the latter class. In early life he had breathed the very
atmosphere of truth, and his tendency to sincerity ever remained the
best element of his character. His was one of those fine-fibred
natures most susceptible to injury. Up to this time his indiscretions
had only been those of foolish, thoughtless youth, while aiming at the
standard of manliness and style in vogue among his city companions.
High-spirited young fellows, not early braced by principle, must pass
through this phase as in babyhood they cut their teeth. If there is
true mettle in them, and they are not perverted by exceptionally bad
influences, they outgrow the idea that to be fast and foolish is to be
men as naturally as they do their roundabouts.

What a man does is often not so important as the state of the heart
that prompts the act. In common parlance, Walter was as good-hearted a
fellow as ever breathed. Indeed, he was really inclined to noble
enthusiasms.

If Miss Bently had been what he imagined her, she might have led him
swiftly and surely into true manhood; but she was only an adept at
pretty seeming with him, and when Mr. Grobb offered her his vast
wealth, with himself as the only incumbrance, she acted promptly and
characteristically.

But perhaps it can be safely said that in no den of iniquity in the
city could Walter Gregory have received such moral injury as poisoned
his very soul when, in Mr. Bently's elegant and respectable parlor,
the "angel" he worshipped "explained how she was situated," and from a
"sense of duty" stated her purpose to yield to the wishes of her
friends. Gregory had often seen Mr. Grobb, but had given him no
thought, supposing him some elderly relative of the family. That this
was the accepted suitor of the girl who had, with tender, meaning
glances, sung for him sentimental ballads, who had sweetly talked to
him of religion and mission work, seemed a monstrous perversion. Call
it unjust, unreasonable, if you will, yet it was the most natural
thing in the world for one possessing his sensitive, intense nature to
pass into harsh, bitter cynicism, and to regard Miss Bently as a
typical girl of the period.

A young man is far on the road to evil when he loses faith in woman.
During the formative period of character she is, of earthly
influences, the most potent in making or marring him. A kind refusal,
where no false encouragement has been given, often does a man good,
and leaves his faith intact; but an experience similar to that of
young Gregory is like putting into a fountain that which may stain and
embitter the waters of the stream in all its length.

At the early age of twenty-two he became what is usually understood by
the phrase "a man of the world." Still his moral nature could not sink
into the depths without many a bitter outcry against its wrongs. It
was with no slight effort that he drowned the memory of his early home
and its good influences. During the first two or three years he
occasionally had periods of passionate remorse, and made spasmodic
efforts toward better things. But they were made in human strength,
and in view of the penalties of evil, rather than because he was
enamored of the right. Some special temptation would soon sweep him
away into the old life, and thus, because of his broken promises and
repeated failures, he at last lost faith in himself also, and lacked
that self-respect without which no man can cope successfully with his
evil nature and an evil world.

Living in a boarding-house, with none of the restraints and purifying
influences of a good home, he formed intimacies with brilliant but
unscrupulous young men. The theatre became his church, and at last the
code of his fast, fashionable set was that which governed his life. He
avoided gross, vulgar dissipation, both because his nature revolted at
it, and also on account of his purpose to permit nothing to interfere
with his prospects of advancement in business. He meant to show Miss
Bently that she had made a bad business speculation after all. Thus
ambition became the controlling element in his character; and he might
have had a worse one. Moreover, in all his moral debasement he never
lost a decided tendency toward truthfulness and honesty. He would have
starved rather than touch anything that did not belong to him, nor
would he allow himself to deceive in matters of business, and it was
upon these points that he specially prided himself.

Gregory's unusual business ability, coupled with his knowledge of
French and German, led to his being sent abroad as agent of his firm.
Five years of life in the materialistic and sceptical atmosphere of
continental cities confirmed the evil tendencies which were only too
well developed before he left his own land. He became what so many
appear to be in our day, a practical materialist and atheist. Present
life and surroundings, present profit and pleasure, were all in all.
He ceased to recognize the existence of a soul within himself having
distinct needs and interests. His thoughts centred wholly in the
comfort and pleasures of the day and in that which would advance his
ambitious schemes. His scepticism was not intellectual and in
reference to the Bible and its teachings, but practical and in
reference to humanity itself. He believed that with few exceptions men
and women lived for their own profit and pleasure, and that religion
and creeds were matters of custom and fashion, or an accident of
birth. Only the reverence in which religion had been held in his early
home kept him from sharing fully in the contempt which the gentlemen
he met abroad seemed to have for it. He could not altogether despise
his mother's faith, but he regarded her as a gentle enthusiast haunted
by sacred traditions. The companionships which he had formed led him
to believe that unless influenced by some interested motive a liberal-
minded man of the world must of necessity outgrow these things. With
the self-deception of his kind, he thought he was broad and liberal in
his views, when in reality he had lost all distinction between truth
and error, and was narrowing his mind down to things only. Jew or
Gentile, Christian or Pagan, it was becoming all one to him. Men
changed their creeds and religions with other fashions, but all looked
after what they believed to be the main chance, and he proposed to do
the same.

As time passed on, however, he began to admit to himself that it was
strange that in making all things bend to his pleasure he did not
secure more. He wearied of certain things. Stronger excitements were
needed to spur his jaded senses. His bets, his stakes at cards grew
heavier, his pleasures more gross, till a delicate organization so
revolted at its wrongs and so chastised him for excess that he was
deterred from self-gratification in that direction.

Some men's bodies are a "means of grace" to them. Coarse dissipation
is a physical impossibility, or swift suicide in a very painful form.
Young Gregory found that only in the excitements of the mind could he
hope to find continued enjoyment. His ambition to accumulate wealth
and become a brilliant business man most accorded with his tastes and
training, and on these objects he gradually concentrated all his
energies, seeking only in club-rooms and places of fashionable resort
recreation from the strain of business.

He recognized that the best way to advance his own interests was to
serve his employers well; and this he did so effectually that at last
he was made a partner in the business, and, with a sense of something
more like pleasure than he had known for a long time, returned to New
York and entered upon his new duties.

As we have said, among those who warmly greeted and congratulated him,
was Mr. Hunting. They gradually came to spend much time together, and
business and money-getting were their favorite themes. Gregory saw
that his friend was as keen on the track of fortune as himself, and
that he had apparently been much more successful. Mr. Hunting
intimated that after one reached the charmed inner circle Wall Street
was a perfect Eldorado, and seemed to take pains to drop occasional
suggestions as to how an investment shrewdly made by one with his
favored point of observation often secured in a day a larger return
than a year of plodding business.

These remarks were not lost on Gregory, and the wish became very
strong that he might share in some of the splendid "hits" by which his
friend was accumulating so rapidly.

Usually Mr. Hunting was very quiet and self-possessed, but one evening
in May he came into Gregory's rooms in a manner indicating not a
little excitement and elation.

"Gregory!" he exclaimed, "I am going to make my fortune."

"Make your fortune! You are as rich as Croesus now."

"The past will be as nothing. I've struck a mine rather than a vein."

"It's a pity some of your friends could not share in your luck."

"Well, a few can. This is so large, and such a good thing, that I have
concluded to let a few intimates go in with me. Only all must keep
very quiet about it;" and he proposed an operation that seemed certain
of success as he explained it.

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