CHAPTER I.
FIFTEEN YEARS LATER.
“The Five Gables” is not much the worse for the wear and tear of fifteen summers and winters. It still stands an irregular shape on the high bluff looking down on its humbler neighbors as if proud of its ugly magnificence. But if the mansion has not changed, can the same be said of the dwellers therein? Let us see. No one will forbid us walking up the steps of the porch, and entering the low window which leads into what seems to be a study and library in one. A man sits at an open desk busily engaged in writing. His black hair is plentifully streaked with grey. His face, although not old, has deep lines graven upon it which ought not to be seen on any but one bowed down with a weight of sin. His eyes are peculiarly sad, and have a hunted look, strange in its intensity, as he looks up from his writing to welcome a tall, fair woman, who opens the door and comes swiftly to his side, laying a white hand on his shoulder. “Still pouring over those old law papers, Andrew?” she said, playfully placing her other hand over the closely written sheets of foolscap. “Why you are making an old man of yourself, working so persistently, you spend the greater part of your time in this musty old study. Every night you have a repast served to you here, and I am sure there are times when you do not retire until the wee small hours. Why do you toil so laboriously? Surely we have an abundance of riches, more than we can ever use. Then why not take a little recreation occasionally? I scarcely see you except at meal hours, and very often those too are spent by you here.”
Andrew turned his head and pressed his lips to the hand still resting on his shoulder. “Have I been so lacking in husbandly care, that you are forced to complain of being neglected, my dear wife? Forgive me, sweet one. Come in front of me that I may see your face. Ah, there is a little frown upon it which must be charmed away.” He rose and pressed an arm around her, playfully tapping the tiny wrinkles on her forehead. She laughed and pointed to the papers. “But you are evading my question, Andrew. Is it necessary that you should dig and delve amongst these musty old things the greater part of your time?”
“Highly necessary, my sweet wife, or I should not do it, rest assured of that; but I hope to be soon through.”
“Ah, but you said that seven years ago. I don’t see as you are any nearer through than then. Many people have remarked to me of your altered appearance. Mrs. Bradley said yesterday, that you look like a man who has a secret grief. Is there anything troubling you, Andrew? If there is, can I know and share it with you?”
Andrew drew his wife’s head down upon his shoulder, so that she might not see the look of anguish which he knew was on his face. His lips trembled for a moment ere he replied, and he looked out of the window wistfully, longingly, as if he were trying to banish an evil spirit or conjure a protecting one. “What should trouble me, my sweetheart? Have I not the dearest wife in all the land, the mother of my cherub child? Mrs. Bradley is an old busy body, who delights in scenting mysteries. Tell her if she inquires after my health again, that I am losing my reason because of the fatality with which the number thirteen pursues me. That will set her into a new train of thought. I believe number thirteen is one of the hobbies she is riding at present.”
“Nonsense, Andrew, you are only fooling. You are too sensible to let anything so simple annoy you, but I am forgetting my errand. We have an invitation to a birthday fetê, and barbecue at Oakdale, the Parker’s country seat, you know. The festivities are to occupy three days, and they begin next week Tuesday. We can easily drive there in a day, by resting our horses. We can start Monday and return Friday.”
Again Andrew’s face clouded with that indescribable melancholy look. “I cannot go, dear one, but I will not deprive you of what I know may be pleasure. Go, take Mary with you, and remain as long as you like.”
“There it is again, Andrew. You deprive yourself of all pleasure just because of these old law papers. I have a mind to come in here some time when you are out, and burn the whole business, only I can never gain an entrance when you are not here. One would think you had treasures untold stored here the way you guard this room. Why, Andrew, we have been married seven years and we have never even taken our wedding journey. You could never spare the time.”
Andrew stroked the little rings of hair from off his wife’s forehead, and kissed her with a remorseful look in his eyes which she did not see. “Do you chafe under this quiet home life, dear one? Would you like a change? If so take our child and visit England.”
“Not without you, Andrew. When I have been absent for only a day I can see how my absence annoys you. I can see with what joy I am welcomed home again, and Andrew, it is not my neighbor alone who has noticed the change in you. I, too, have watched this growing melancholy which shuts you so completely within yourself. Sometimes I have seen you clasp Mary to you with such fervor as to frighten the child, and your eyes look at her so strangely, as if you feared some harm might come to her.”
Andrew unloosed his clasp and strode nervously to the window, and stood for some time gazing out. What were his thoughts? Who but his God could know? Suddenly he turned and once again took his wife in his arms. “Victoria, have you ever regretted becoming my wife? Has there been at any time cause for regret on your part?”
“Never, Andrew. You have been all that a most tender, devoted husband could ever be. In fact when I have seen your anger displayed toward others, I have often wondered how it is that to me, who gives you ample provocation, you are so kind and tender.”
He placed his hand under her chin and looked into her eyes. “Do you still mourn for Roger? Are you satisfied with my love and devotion? Do you think that if he had lived he could have cared for you better than I?”
Victoria burst into tears. “You are cruel, Andrew. In this continual referring to a dead past which can never be recalled, you hurt me. Have I not told you that I can never love you with that freshness which I gave to Roger? Were you not at the time contented to take me with a bleeding heart, which since then God has mercifully healed by giving unto me my blessed Mary? Why, then, will you persist in opening this old wound?”
“Because I long for you to give me the same worshipping love which I lavish upon you, dear wife.”
Victoria shook her head. “That would be impossible, Andrew. Even Roger, though he loved me, did not give me the tender devotion which at all times you have done. I hardly think any woman of my acquaintance can say truthfully that in seven years of married life, they have never received a word of blame or censure from their husbands. I am proud that I can say it. Few women are blessed with such devotion as falls to my lot. No woman lives who could return it in like manner.”
Andrew clasped her closer. “You love me better than you did at first, Victoria?”
“Why should I not? To others you are cold and unapproachable. To me and Mary you are all tenderness and love. God bless you.”
Andrew shivered as if a cold wind had penetrated his being, and put his hand before his eyes. “Don’t, Victoria!” he said, in an unsteady tone. “Ask God to curse me. If there be a God, He surely will.”
“Andrew, husband, I beg of you to cease that scoffing tone which seems to be growing upon you. Say there is a God. Not ‘if there be a God.’ You know there is, or why are we permitted to live? Do not let Mary grow up with the knowledge of having an infidel father. For her sake, if not for mine, be like other people. Accompany us to church next Sabbath. You have never entered one since our marriage.”
“We will not argue this point, Victoria,” said Andrew, gently, but firmly. “I shall never enter any church while I am in this frame of mind. I am hypocrite enough without adding to my sin, God knows, if there is such a being.”
“What sin, Andrew! Why do you speak so wildly?”
Andrew tried to laugh. “Are we not all sinners, Victoria, in the sight of that God in whom you believe?”
“Ah, yes,” sighed Victoria. “We are, indeed, miserable sinners; but you frightened me when you spoke so wildly, and you give rise to very unpleasant comments by your morbid, unfriendly ways. Can I not coax you to think better of your hasty decision, and so attend this barbecue with me?”
“Ask anything of me but to absent myself from home, dear wife. That I cannot do.”
Victoria turned to leave the room. Andrew’s troubled eyes followed her. “You are not angry with me, Victoria?”
“No, it would be silly of me to become angry over so simple a thing, but I am puzzled at your strange manner, Andrew. I fear you are concealing something which I ought to know.”
Andrew sank into a chair as Victoria left the room, and as he laid his head upon the table a heavy groan came from his white, trembling lips. Now that he was alone all the gayety of manner assumed to deceive Victoria left him, and the wretched man writhed in agony of spirit, until the drops of moisture rolled from his face, and covered the manuscript lying upon the table with great unsightly blots. “Concealing something which she ought to know,” he murmured. “Great God! if she only knew, if she only knew. If I dared tell her would the telling bring me peace? Would it bring me a sweet dreamless sleep, such as I have not known in fifteen years? Christ! Fifteen eternities have I lived in these years, but if I tell her I shall loose her, and ah, more bitter still, I shall loose my sunbeam, my little Mary. No, no, I can not, dare not tell her. She is beginning to love me. In time she will forget him and then, ah, what bliss will be mine when I shall hear her say ‘I love thee better than ever I loved thy brother.’ I scoff at religion in her presence, and pretend that I think there is no God, but merciful Father! do I not know that some day I shall be called to account for my crimes? That there is no hope for me in this world nor the next? Then, how dare I bend my knee in reverence and piety, when nothing but evil thoughts throng my brain?”
At this moment the door quietly opened and the roguish face of a child of six years peeped slyly in. Her laughing eyes grew serious as she heard the sobs of her father. She held a hideous rag doll in her arms, and as she stole on tip toe into the room, she placed one chubby finger on the slit where the doll’s mouth was supposed to be and whispered: “Don’t dare to breathe, Dinah. Don’t make the weentiest bit of noise, for poor papa has one of his bad, nasty headaches, and you will be sent from the room in disgrace. Now mind.” The child gravely put her hand upon her father’s knee, and as he gave a guilty start, she asked: “Is it very, very bad, dear papa? Can your comfort charm it away?”
Andrew snatched the child to his breast, and covered her face with kisses. This little one was the only being in all the great world to whom he dare show his heart. He nestled his face in the thick flaxen curls on his darling’s head. He was called a hard man by his fellow men. His servants knew him only as a relentless taskmaster, whose lightest word must be obeyed, but the child in his arms had never heard one harsh word from him, or seen other than a loving smile on her father’s face when in his presence; and she gave him love for love. She passionately adored the stern, gloomy-faced man, whose heart opened at her bidding as a flower opens to the sun. “I told Dinah you was sick, and so she mustn’t talk,” said the child, patting her father’s cheek, “and I think she deserves a merit card for her good behavior. She hasn’t said a word.”
The father started, and looked around the room, expecting to see a third person, but seeing nobody, he said: “And who may Dinah be, my angel?”
Mary raised the dilapidated doll. “Just as if you didn’t know, Papa Willing, when you have kissed my ownest own Dinah lots of times. There, there, don’t cry, baby, because papa has forgotten you. We shall not love him any more.” Mary soothed the imaginary crying baby so tenderly, and with so sweet an air of gravity, much like Victoria when soothing Mary’s childish grief, that Andrew laughed in spite of his gloomy thoughts, and caught Mary’s face between his hands. “You are a little witch,” he said, kissing the roguish face. “You are putting on all that love. Dinah is only a bundle of rags. You don’t love her.”
“I truly do,” replied Mary, clasping Dinah closer. “I love her best of all my children. She is so sweet.”
“She must be,” laughed Andrew. “Why she is simply disreputable. Where is the handsome Paris doll I gave you only last week?”
“Shut up in the clothes press. She put on airs before Dinah, just because she had real eyes and hair. I could not have that, you know, so into the clothes press she went, and she don’t come out until she begs Dinah’s pardon.”
“And where is Miss Flora McFlimsey, who has been the reigning favorite for quite a while?” asked Andrew, amused at the prattle of his innocent child.
“Oh, I drowned her in the lake this morning. Tied a couple of stones to her legs, and then threw her in; and oh, papa, she sunk beautiful, and the cunningest little whirlpool came up where she dropped in.”
“Horrors!” ejaculated Andrew in feigned amazement. “What a blood-thirsty little girl you are! Why, if I am permitted to ask, did you kill her?”
“I didn’t kill her, papa, only just drowned her. I know the very spot. Dan can wade out and get her any time. I mean she shall stay there until she becomes a better child. She hooked all the raspberry jam from the preserve-closet, this morning.”
“You don’t tell me,” said Andrew, seriously. “How did you discover that it was she?”
“Her face was covered with it, just actually ‘smeared’ as mamma says.”
“Was there any jam on your face, chickie?”
Mary looked up and caught the twinkle in her father’s eye.
“Only just a little, where I happened to kiss Flora before she was washed.”
“Oh, you are a sham,” laughed Andrew, hugging the little maid close to his heart. “Have you told mamma about the jam?”
“Not yet, papa. I heard the groom telling the stable boy yesterday, ‘never to do anything to-day that he could put off till to-morrow,’ so I think I’ll not tell mamma till to-morrow.”
“What a philosopher I have here,” said Andrew, drawing the flaxen curls through his fingers, “but did you not misunderstand Teddy? Did he not say: ‘Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day?’”
“He may have said that,” replied Mary, nodding her small head, “but I like the other way a heap better.”
“You are not alone, dear child,” said Andrew, a gloom settling upon his face again. “Most people like to transpose the good old adage. I among them,” he sighed.
Mary looked up quickly. She was quick to note these sudden changes in her father. “I love you, papa. I do love you, best of anybody in all this world.”
“Do you love me better than you love your mamma?” whispered Andrew longingly.
The child laid her cool cheek against the hot face of her father, and clasped him about the neck. “I love you first; then I love mamma; next I love Grandma Willing, who has gone to heaven, and then I love Dinah. Poor Dinah. Teddy threw her into a bucket of dirty water yesterday, and she doesn’t look very clean, and then the mean thing laughed, so he did.”
Oh, what sweet music was the prattle of this child to Andrew. Her baby love and caressing ways was all the heaven which he ever expected to enjoy. With his child in his arms he forgot for a time the sword of Damocles suspended by a hair, and which might fall at any moment and crush him. Few moments in Andrew Willing’s life could justly be called happy ones, but when he looked back over the sin-laden years, he did not regret what he had done, except that the knowledge of his sin being known might tear from him the only two beings whom he loved. He looked after Mary as she ran from the room hugging the beloved Dinah. “Proclaim my sin,” he murmured, “and by so doing become a jail-bird, shut away forever from my wife and child? Never! I may suffer all the tortures of the dammed, but I will still keep my secret. I must go more into society, or Victoria, with her keen intuition, will surely discover something, and I must also fill the house with guests. It will, perhaps, serve to drive these demons away which so harass me.”
He stepped out of the window, went down the veranda steps, and took the avenue leading to the lake. With bent head and eyes fixed moodily upon the ground, he walked along. He was envied by many people for his wide domains and apparent prosperity. Men who had met with adversity would turn to their neighbors and say: “Talk of luck, why look at Andrew Willing. He is the luckiest dog going. Everything he touches turns to gold. His tobacco crops are always the finest. His negroes never sicken and die. Everything runs smoothly with him. Even his blind brother was conveniently killed in a railway accident, and Andrew profits again as usual by taking the fair widow along with the property.” But if these men could have looked deep into this wretched man’s heart; if they could have known the misery and tortures which every hour in the day he endured, then would their envy have been turned to pity, guilty though he might be. Andrew had been trying for ten years to stifle his conscience, which seemed to grow more active with advancing years, and would not be stilled. At the turn in the avenue he stopped, and looked back at the old gabled house in which he had spent so many happy hours; which also held the beings whom he adored, but alas, a home filled with grinning demons, whose devilish, hideous whisperings in his ears whenever he entered, were driving him to the verge of madness. He smote his breast remorsefully as his eyes wandered over the house, and rested for a moment on the highest gable which had once been the room of his father’s favorite slave, but whose stained glass windows had been boarded up for over thirty years. “Peace, peace!” he cried. “Will I ever know peace again until I have made reparation to those I have wronged? And when I have done so, what then? A felon’s cell or a suicide’s grave will be all I shall have to look forward to. Oh, God! I cannot. I cannot. Let fate do her worst. I will keep my secret.”