Opening a Chestnut Burr Part 27

"Chuckle when you find her doing it. Hannah, who prepared this breakfast?"

"Yourself, miss," answered the woman, with an admiring grin.

"That will do, Hannah; we will wait upon ourselves. Shame on you, sir!

You are no connoisseur, since you cannot tell a lady's work from a kitchen-maid's. Moreover, you have shown that wretched doubting disposition again."

Now that they were alone, Gregory said, earnestly, "I shall never doubt you again."

"I hope you never will doubt that I wish to do you good, Mr. Gregory,"

she replied, pa.s.sing him a cup of tea.

"You have done me more good in a few brief hours than I ever hoped to receive. Miss Walton, how can I repay you?"

"By being a better friend to yourself. Commence by eating this."

He did not find it very difficult to comply. After a little time he said, "But my conscience condemns me for caring too much for myself."

"And no doubt your conscience is right. The idea of being a friend to yourself and going against your conscience!"

"Then I have ever been my own worst enemy."

"I can believe that, and so you'll continue to be if you don't take another piece of toast."

"And yet there has always seemed a fatal necessity for me to do wrong and go wrong. Miss Walton, you are made of different clay from me and most people that I know. It is your nature to be good and n.o.ble."

"Nonsense!" said Annie, with a positive frown. "Different clay indeed!

I imagine you do wrong for the same reason that I do, because you wish to; and you fail in doing right because you have nothing but your weak human will to keep you up."

"And what keeps you up, pray?"

"Can you even suppose that I or any one can be a Christian without Christ?"

He gave one of his incredulous shrugs.

"Now what may that mean?" she asked.

"Pardon me if I say that I think yours is a pretty and harmless superst.i.tion. This world is one of inexorable law and necessity down to the minutest thing. A weed is always a weed. A rose is always a rose.

It's my misfortune to be a weed. It's your good fortune to be a rose."

Annie looked as if she might become a briery one at that moment, for this direct style of compliment, though honest, was not agreeable.

Conscious of many struggles with evil, it was even painful, for it did her injustice in two aspects of the case. So she said, dryly, "What an automaton you make me out to be!"

"How so?" "If I merely do right as the rose grows, I deserve no credit.

I'm but little better than a machine."

"Not at all. I compared you to something that has a beautiful life of its own. But I would willingly be a machine, and a very angular, uncouth one too, if some outside power would only work me right and to some purpose."

"Such talk seems to me idle, Mr. Gregory. I know that I have to try very hard to do right, and I often fail. I do not believe that our very existence begins in a lie, as it were, for from earliest years conscience tells us that we needn't do wrong and ought not to. Honestly now, isn't this true of your conscience?"

"But my reason concludes otherwise, and reason is above conscience--above everything, and one must abide by its decisions."

For a moment Annie did not know how to answer. She was not versed in theology and metaphysics, but she knew he was wrong. Therefore she covered her confusion by quietly pouring him out another cup of tea, and then said, "Even my slight knowledge of the past has taught me how many absurd and monstrous things can be done and said in the name of reason. Religion is a matter of revelation and experience. But it is not contrary to reason, certainly not to mine. If your reason should conclude that this tea is not hot, what difference would that make to me? My religion is a matter of fact, of vivid consciousness."

"Of course it is. It's your life, your nature, just as in my nature there is nothing akin to it. That is why I say you are made of different clay from myself; and I am very glad of it," he added with an air of pleasantry which she saw veiled genuine earnestness, "for I wish you the best of everything now and always."

Annie felt that she could not argue him out of his folly; and while she was annoyed, she could not be angry with him for expressions that were not meant as flattery, but were rather the strong language of his grat.i.tude. "Time will cure him of his delusions," she thought, and she said, lightly, "Mr. Gregory, from certain knowledge of myself which you cannot have I disclaim all your absurd ideas in regard to the new-fangled clay of my composition. I know very well that I am ordinary flesh and blood, a fact that you will soon find out for yourself. As your physician, I p.r.o.nounce that such wild fancies and extravagant language prove that you are out of your head, and that you need quieting sleep. I am going to read you the dullest book in the library as a sedative."

"No, please, sing rather."

"What! after such a breakfast! Do you suppose that I would ruin the reputation of my voice in one fell moment? Now what kind of clay led to this remark? Do as your doctor says. Recline on the lounge. Close your eyes. Here is a treatise on the Nebular Hypothesis that looks unintelligible enough for our purpose."

"Nebular Hypothesis! Another heavenly experience such as you are ever giving me."

"Come, Mr. Gregory, punning is a very bad symptom. You must go to sleep at once." And soon her mellow voice was finding its way into a labyrinth of hard scientific terms, as a mountain brook might murmur among the stones. After a little time she asked of Gregory, whose eyes remained wide open, "How does it sound?"

"Like the multiplication table set to music."

"Why don't you go to sleep?"

"I'm trying to solve a little nebular hypothesis of my own. I was computing how many million belles such as I know, and how many ages, would be required to condense them into a woman like yourself."

Annie shut the book with a slam, and with an abrupt, half-vexed "good-by," left the room. For a brief time Gregory lay repenting of his disastrous levity, and then slept.

CHAPTER XX

MISS WALTON MADE OF ORDINARY CLAY

When Gregory awoke, the sun had sunk behind 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 firelight! 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:

"A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food."

"How dark and l.u.s.trous her eyes are in the firelight!" 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."