Books: Opening a Chestnut Burr

E >> Edward Payson Roe >> Opening a Chestnut Burr

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As Gregory gloomily uttered these bitter words, they stood looking at
the leaf that had suggested them. Annie's face brightened with a
sudden thought. She turned, and after a few rapid steps sprung lightly
up and caught the twig from which the leaf had fallen. Then turning to
her companion, who regarded with surprise and admiration the agile
grace of the act, she said, "Mr. Gregory, you need lessons in logic.
If the leaf you hold is your theme, as you gave me reason to believe,
you don't stick to it, and you draw from it conclusions that don't
follow the premise. Another thing, it is not right to develop a
subject without regard to its connection. Now from just this place,"
she continued, pointing with her finger, "the leaf dropped. What do
you see? What was its connection?"

"Why, a little branch full of other leaves. These would soon have
dropped off and died also, if you had not hastened their fate."

"That's a superficial view, like the one you just took of this
'miserable world,' as you call it. I think it is a very good world--a
much better one than we deserve. And now look closely and justly at
your theme's connection, and tell me what you see. Look just here;"
and her finger rested on the little green spot where the stem of the
leaf had joined the spray.

"I see a very small bud," he said, intelligence of her meaning dawning
in his face.

"Which will develop next spring into other leaves and perhaps into a
new branch. All summer long your leaf has rustled and fluttered
joyously over the certainty that a richer and fuller life would come
after it, a life that it was providing for through the sunny days and
dewy nights. There is no death here, only change for the better. And
so with everything that has bloomed and flourished in this garden
during the past season, provision has been made for new and more
abundant life. All these bright but falling leaves and fading flowers
are merely Nature's robes, ornaments that she is throwing carelessly
aside as she withdraws for a little time from her regal state. Wait
till she appears again next spring, as young, fresh, and beautiful as
when, like Eve, she saw her first bright morning. Come and see her
upon her throne next June. Nature full of death! Why, Mr. Gregory, she
speaks of nothing but life to those who understand her language."

"O that you would teach it to me!" he said, with a deeper meaning than
she detected.

"Again," she continued, "our theology does not represent death as
making havoc anywhere. It is sin that makes the havoc, and death is
only one of its consequences. And even this enemy God compels to work
for the good of His friends. Do not think," she continued, coming a
step nearer in her earnestness, "that I make such allusions to pain
you, but only in my sincere wish to help you, and illustrate my
meaning by something you know so well. Did death make havoc in your
mother's case? Was it not rather a sombre-liveried janitor that opened
for her the gates of heaven?"

He was deeply touched, and turned away his face. After a moment he
continued his walk, that they might get further away from the house
and the danger of interruption.

He suddenly startled Annie by saying, in a tone of harsh and intense
bitterness, "Her death made 'havoc' for me. If she had lived I might
have been a good man instead of the wretch I am. If death as janitor
opens the gates of heaven, your religion teaches that it also opens
the gates of hell. How can I love a God who shuts up the sinful in an
inferno--in dungeons of many and varied tortures, and racks them
forever? Can I, just to escape all this, pretend that I love Him, when
in truth I fear and dread Him unspeakably? No, I'll never be a
hypocrite."

Tears glistened in Annie's eyes as he turned to look at her.

"You pity me," he said, more gently. "Your God does not. If He wanted
to be loved He should never have revealed a hell."

"Should He not in mercy, if it really existed? And does it not exist?
Will merely a beautiful place make heaven for anybody? Mr. Gregory,
look around this lovely autumn evening. See the crimson glory of those
clouds yonder in the west. See that brightness shading off into paler
and more exquisite tints. Look, how those many-hued leaves reflect the
glowing sky. The air is as sweet and balmy as that of Eden could have
been. The landscape is beautiful in itself, and especially attractive
to you. To our human eyes it hardly seems as if heaven could be more
perfect than this. And yet, standing in the one spot of all the earth
most beautiful to you, Mr. Gregory, pardon me for saying it, your face
expresses nothing but pain. There is not a trace of happiness in it.
You were not happy when you came here. I saw that the first day. All
the pleasant surroundings of your own home have not made you happy.
Have they given you even peace and quiet? Place does not make heaven,
but something we carry in our own bosoms," she concluded, leaving him
to supply the rest of her thought.

His face was white with fear, and there was terror in his tone as he
turned and said to her, in a low voice, "Miss Walton, that is what I
have been coming to see and dread, of late, and as you put the
thoughts into words I see that it is true. I carry perdition in my own
heart. When I am alone my imaginings frighten me; and when with
others, impulses arise to do the devil's own work."

"But it is the nature of God to save from all this. I am so sorry that
you do not understand Him better."

"He saves some," said Gregory, gloomily.

"But many will not let Him save them," urged Annie.

"I should be only too glad to have Him save me, but whether He will or
not is the point at issue, and my hope is very faint. Everything to-
day, but you, seems to confirm my fate. Miss Walton, won't you take
that little rustic seat there by the brook? I wish to tell you
something that will probably settle this question."

Annie wonderingly complied. This was an experience she had never had
before. She was rapidly realizing the difference between being the
spiritual guide of the girls in her Bible-class and being the adviser
of this strong-minded yet greatly perverted man. But she turned to him
a face full of sympathy and encouragement.

For a moment it seemed he did not know how to begin, and he paced
restlessly up and down before her. Then he said, "Miss Walton, you
remember that worm-infested chestnut through which you gave me such a
just lesson?"

"Please do not speak of my foolish words at that time," she replied,
eagerly.

"Pardon me, they were not foolish. They, with the illustration of my
own choice, revealed me to myself as nothing had ever done before. Had
it not been for your graceful tact, I should have made a fool of
myself by being angry. If you had known what I deserved then you would
not have let me off so easily. But it's true. That lonely, selfish
chestnut, with a worm in its kernel, was a good emblem of myself. Evil
is throned in my heart supreme and malignant. I suppose it's through
my own fault, but be that as it may, it's there, my master. I groan
over and curse the fact, but I do evil and think evil continually, and
I fear I always shall.

"No, listen to me to the end," he continued, as she was about to
speak.

"When on that strange mountain expedition, you made the remark, 'What
congenial friends we might be!' Those words have echoed in my heart
ever since, like the refrain of a home-song to a captive. I would give
more than I can express for your friendship--for the privilege of
seeing you and speaking to you frankly on these subjects occasionally,
for you and you only have inspired a faint hope that I might become a
better man. You are making Christianity seem a reality and not a
fashion. Though possessing human weakness, you triumph over it, and
you say it is through prayer to God. I find it impossible not to
believe everything you say, for whatever your faults are you are truth
itself. Through your influence the thought has come that God might
also hear and help me, but I have the fear and almost the belief that
I have placed myself beyond His mercy. At any rate I have almost lost
hope in anything I can do by myself. I was in moral despair when I
came here, and might as well have been dead, but you have led me to a
willingness to make one more struggle, and a great one, if I can see
in it any chance of success. I fear I am deceiving myself, but when
with you, though you are immeasurably better than I, hope steals into
my heart, that before was paralyzed by despair. When you come to know
me as I know myself, I fear that you will shrink in just horror away,
and that I shall see reflected in your face the verdict of heaven. But
you shall know the worst--the very worst. I can never use deceit with
you. If afterward you ever take my stained hand again--"

He did not finish the sentence, but heaved a great sigh, as if of
longing and hope that words could not utter.

It was the old truth illustrated, that God must become human to gain
humanity. Abstract truth could not save this lost and guilty man, but
the wanderer hoped that in this sweet human life he had found the clew
back to the divine life.

Annie trembled at the responsibility that now suddenly burdened her as
she saw this trembling spirit clinging to her as the one frail barrier
between himself and the gulf of utter despair. She nerved herself, by
prayer and the exertion of all her will, to be equal to the emergency.

And yet it was a fearful ordeal that she was called to go through as
the remorseful and deeply agitated man, his face flushed with shame,
now with impassioned, more often with despairing gesture and accent,
poured out the story of his past life, and laid bare his evil heart,
while he paced up and down the little walk before her.

The transaction with Hunting he purposely passed over, speaking of it
merely as a business misfortune that had robbed him even of earthly
ambition. She saw a few sin-stained pages of that dreadful book of
human guilt which God must look at every day.

Gregory did not spare himself, and palliated nothing, softening and
brightening no harsh and dark lines. On the contrary, he was stern and
blunt, and it was strange indeed to hear him charging himself before a
pure, innocent young girl, whose good opinion was life to him, with
what she regarded as crimes. When he at last came to speak of his
designs against herself, of how he had purposed to take the bloom and
beauty from her character that he might laugh at goodness as a dream
and pretence, and despise her as he did himself, his eye flashed
angrily, and he grew vindictive as if denouncing an object of his
hate. He could not even look at her during the last of his confession,
but turned away his face, fearing to see Annie's expression of
aversion and disgust.

It was with a paling cheek and growing dread that she looked into that
dark and fearful place, a perverted human heart, and her every breath
was a prayer that God would enable her to see and act as Christ would
were some poor creature revealing to Him his desperate need.

Gregory suddenly paused in his low but passionate flow of words, and
put his hand to his head as if the pain were insupportable. In fact,
his anguish and the intense feeling of the day had again brought on
one of his old nervous headaches. Thus far he had scarcely noticed it,
but now the sharp, quivering pangs proved how a wronged physical
nature could retaliate; how much more the higher and more delicate
moral nature!

After the paroxysm had passed, he continued, in the hard, weary tone
of utter dejection (for he had dreaded even to look at Annie, and her
silence confirmed his worst fears), "Well, Miss Walton, you now know
the worst. On this peaceful Sabbath evening you have seen more of
perdition than you ever will again. You cannot even speak to me, and I
dare not look at your face. The expression of horror and disgust which
I know must be there would blast me and haunt me forever. It would be
worse than death, for I did have a faint hope--"

He was interrupted by an audible sob, and turning, saw Annie with her
face buried in her hands, weeping as if her heart would break. He was
puzzled for a moment, and then, in the despairing condition of his
mind interpreted her wrongly. Standing near her with clenched hands,
he said, in the same hard tones which seemed to have passed beyond the
expression of feeling, "I'm a brute and worse. I have been wounding
you as with blows by my vile story. I have been dragging your pure
thoughts through the mire of my wretched life."

Annie tried to speak, but apparently could not for excess of emotion.

"Why could I not have gone away and died by myself, like some unclean
beast?" he muttered. Then, in a tone which she never forgot, and with
the manner of one who was indeed leaving hope and life behind him, he
said, "Farewell, Miss Walton; you will be better after I am gone."

She sprung up, and laying restraining hands upon his arm, sobbed, "No--no.
Why don't you--you--understand me? My heart's--breaking for you--wait
till I can speak."

He placed her gently on the seat again. A great light was coming into
his eyes, and he stood bending toward her as if existence depended on
her next words. Could it be that her swelling throat and sobs meant
sympathy for him?

She soon controlled herself, and looking up at him, with a light in
her eyes that shone through her tears as sun-rays through the rain,
said, "Forgive me. I never realized before that so much sin and
suffering could exist in one unhappy life. I do pity you, as God does
far more. I will help you as He will."

Gregory knelt at her feet, and kissed her hand with the fervor of a
captive who had just received life and liberty.

"See, I do not shrink from you," she continued. "My Master would not.
Why should I? He came to save just such, and just such we all would be
but for His grace and shielding. I'm so--sorry for you."

He turned hastily away for a moment to hide his feelings, and said,
slowly, "I cannot trust myself--I cannot trust God yet; but I trust
you, and I believe you have saved a soul from death."

He stood looking toward the glowing west, and, for the first time in
years, hoped that his life might close in brightness.

"Mr. Gregory," said Annie, in a voice so changed that he started and
turned toward her hardly knowing what to expect. She stood beside him,
no longer a tender, compassionate woman grieving for him, as if his
sin were only misfortune, but her face was almost stern in its purity
and earnestness. "Mr. Gregory, the mercy which God shows, and which I
faintly reflect, is for _you_ in sharp distinction from your sin. Do
not for a moment think that I can look with any lenience or indulgence
on all the horrible evil you have laid before me. Do not think I can
excuse or pass lightly over it as something of little consequence. I
hate your sin as I hate my own. I can honestly feel and frankly show
the sympathy I have manifested, only in view of your penitence, and
your sincere purpose, with God's help, to root out the evil of your
life. This I am daily trying to do, and this you must do in the one
and only way in which there is any use in trying. It is only with this
clear understanding that I can give you my hand in the friendship of
mutual helpfulness, and in the confidence of respect."

He reverently took her hand and said, "Your conditions are just, Miss
Walton, and I accept your friendship as offered with a gratitude
beyond words. I can never use deceit where you are concerned, even in
thought. But please do not expect too much of me. I have formed the
habit of doubting. It may be very long before I have your simple,
beautiful faith. I will do just the best I can! It seems that if you
will trust me, help me, pray for me, I can succeed. If I am mistaken,
I will carry my wretchedness where the sight of it will not pain you.
If I ever do reach your Christian life, I will lavish a wealth of
gratitude upon you that cannot be expressed. Indeed, I will in any
case, for you have done all that I could hope and more."

"I will do all you ask," she said, heartily, giving at the same time
his hand a strong pressure with her warm, throbbing palm, that sent a
subtle current of hope and strength into his heart. Her face softened
into an expression of almost sisterly affection, and with a gleam of
her old mirthfulness she continued, "Take counsel of practical common-
sense, Mr. Gregory. Why talk so doubtfully of success, seeking it as
you purpose to? What right have you even to imagine that God will
bestow upon you the great distinction of making you the first one of
the race He refused to hear and answer? Be humble and believe that He
will treat you like other people."

He stopped in their slow walk toward the house and said, with glad
animation, "Miss Walton, do you know you have done more to strengthen
me in that little speech than by a long and labored argument?"

And so they passed in out of the purple twilight, Annie's heart
thrilling with something of the joy of heaven, and Gregory feeling as
if the dawn were coming after Egyptian night.

As they left the garden a dusky face peered out of some thick
shrubbery and looked cautiously around. Then Jeff appeared and
attributed to the scene just described a very different meaning from
its real significance.

CHAPTER XXV

THE OLD HOME IN DANGER--GREGORY RETRIEVES HIMSELF

Gregory made desperate efforts to keep up at the supper-table, but
could not prevent slight evidences of physical pain, which Annie
silently noticed. After tea he hoped to escape to his room, for he
could not endure to show even his physical weakness so soon again. On
the contrary, he was longing intensely for an opportunity to manifest
a little strength of some kind. After his recent interview he felt
that he could even bear one of his nervous headaches alone. But as he
was about to excuse himself, Annie interrupted, saying, "Now, Mr.
Gregory, that is not according to agreement. Do you suppose I cannot
see that you are half beside yourself with one of your old headaches?
Was I such a poor physician the last time that you seek to escape me
now? Come back to the parlor. I will not go out to church this
evening, but devote myself to you."

"Miss Walton," he replied, in a low tone, "when can I make any return
for all your kindness? I must seem weakness itself in every respect,
and I dread to appear to you always in that light."

"Your pride needs bringing down, sir; see how towering it is. Here you
would go off by yourself, and endure a useless martyrdom all night
perhaps, when by a few simple remedies I can relieve you, or at least
help you forget the pain. I have not the slightest objection to your
being a martyr, but I want some good to come out of it." "But I shall
spoil your evening."

"Certainly you will, if I think of you groaning up there by yourself,
while I am singing, perhaps:

"'I love to steal awhile away
From every cumbering care!'"

"Then I'm a cumbering care!"

"Whether you are or not, I'm not going to steal away from you to-
night. Come, do as I bid you."

He was only too glad to submit to her delicious tyranny. She wheeled
the lounge up to the fire, and placed her chair beside it, while the
rest of the family, seeing that he had his old malady, went to the
sitting-room.

"I have great pride in my nursing powers," she continued, in her
cheery way. "Now, if I were a man, I'd certainly be a doctor."

"Thank Heaven you are not!" he said, with a devout earnestness that
quite startled her.

"What? A doctor?" she asked, quickly.

"Yes--no; I mean a man, and doctor too."

"I see no reason why you should show such bitter opposition to my
being a man or a doctor either. Why should you?"

"O--well--I think you are just right as a woman. You make me believe
in the doctrine of election, for it seems to me that you were destined
from all eternity to be just what you are."

"What a strange, unfathomable doctrine that is!" said Annie, softly
and musingly.

"It's nothing but mystery all around us," he replied, wearily and
dejectedly.

"No, not 'all around us,'" she answered, quickly. "It's clear when we
look up. Faith builds a safe bridge to God, and to Him there are no
mysteries."

Her touch upon his brow thrilled him, and her presence was both
exhilarating and restful.

At last she said, "I am sorry you have these dreadful headaches so
often."

"I shall never be again."

"Why so?"

"Because they have led to this evening. It has been so many long,
miserable years since I experienced anything like this."

"Ah, I see, you have been very lonely. You have had no one to care for
you, and that I believe has been the cause of half your trouble--evil,
I mean. Indeed, they are about the same thing. Don't you see? The
world is too large a place for a home. You need a nook in it, with
some one there to look after you and for you to think about."

He looked at her searchingly, and then turned away his face in pain.
She could not utter such words in that placid style, were she not
utterly devoid of the feeling that was filling his soul with an
ecstasy of hope and fear.

"Do not think that even many of our sex are like Miss Bently. You will
see and choose more wisely hereafter, and find that, in exchanging
that wretched club-life for a cosey home of your own, you take a good
step in all respects."

"Would to Heaven that I had met such a girl as you at first!" he
ventured to say. "How different then all might have been!"

"There is no use in dwelling on the past," she replied, innocently.
"You are now pledged to make the future right."

"God helping me, I will. I will use every means in my power," he said,
in a tone of deep earnestness; and, as principal part of the means,
determined to take her advice, but with reference to herself. After a
few moments he said, "Miss Walton, as I promised to be perfectly frank
with you, I want to ask an explanation of something that I do not
understand, and which has been almost a heavenly surprise to me. I was
nearly certain before this afternoon that when you came to know what a
stained, evil man I am--"

"Was," interrupted Annie.

"No, what I am. Character is not made in a moment. As yet, I only hope
and purpose to do better. I can hardly understand why you do not
shrink from me in disgust. It seemed that both your faith and your
nature would lead you to do this. I thought it possible that out of
your kindness you might try to stand at a safe distance and give me
some good advice across the gulf. But that which I feared would drive
you from me forever has only brought you nearer. Again I say, it has
been a heavenly surprise."

"You use the word 'heavenly' with more appropriateness than you
think," she replied, gravely. "All such surprises are heavenly in
their origin, and my course is but a faint reflection of Heaven's
disposition toward you, and was prompted by the duty I owe to God as
well as to you. Self-righteousness would have led me in Pharisaic
pride to say, 'Stand aside, I am holier than thou.' But you have only
to read the life of the perfect One to know that in so doing I should
not have been like Him. He laid His rescuing hands on both the
physical and the moral leper--"

"As you have upon me," said Gregory, with a look of such intense
gratitude that she was embarrassed.

"I deserve no great credit, for it was only right that I should do the
utmost in my power to help you. How else could I be a Christian in any
real sense? But there is nothing strange about it. Christianity is not
like false religions, that require unnatural and useless sacrifices.
If I were a true physician, and found you suffering from a terrible
and contagious disease, while I feared and loathed the disease, I
might have the deepest sympathy for you and do my best to cure you. I
do loathe the sin you confessed, inexpressibly. See how near it came
to destroying you. While God hates the sin, He ever loves the sinful."

"I hope you will always be divine in that respect," he could not
forbear saying, with rising color.

But her thoughts were so intent on what was uppermost in her heart
that she did not notice his covert meaning, and said, innocently, "I
will give you honest friendship so long as you honestly try to redeem
the pledges of to-day."

"Then I have your friendship for life, be it long or short," said he,
decisively.

With more lightness in her tone she continued, "And I too will ask a
question that has a bearing on a little theory of my own. Supposing I
had shrunk from you, and tried to give some good advice from a safe
distance, what would you have done?"

"Left for New York to-morrow, and gone straight to the devil as one of
his own imps," he replied, without a moment's hesitation.

She sighed deeply, and said, "I fear you would--that is, if left to
yourself. And the worst of it is, it seems to me that this is the way
the Church is trying to save the world. Suppose a doctor should
address his patients through a speaking-trumpet and hand them his
remedies on the end of a very long rod. Death would laugh at his
efforts. People can be saved only as Christ saved them. We must go
where they are, lay our hands upon them, and look sympathy and hope
right into their eyes. If Christ's followers would only do this, how
many more might be rescued who now seem hopelessly given over to
evil!"

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