“O, Betsy!” he said, “if you knew how I have been perplexed, you wouldn't wonder at my fancies!”
“I can fancy all that, my boy,” she gently answered, “and I'll tell you another thing, Gilbert—your mother has a heavy secret on her mind, and I rather guess it concerns your father. No—don't look so eager-like—I don't know it. All I do know is that you were born in Phildelphy.”
“In Philadelphia! I never heard that.”
“Well—it's neither here nor there. I've had my hands too full to spy out other people's affairs, but many a thing has come to me in a nateral way, or half-unbeknown. You can't do better than leave all sich wild guesses and misdoubtin's to me, that's better able to handle 'em. Not that I'm a-goin' to preach and declare anything until I know the rights of it, whatever and wherever. Well, as I was sayin'—for there's Beulah Green comin' up the road, and you must git your usual face onto you, though Goodness knows, mine's so crooked, I've often said nothin' short o' Death'll ever make much change in it—but never mind, I'll go down a few days to your mother, when you're off, though I don't promise to do much, except, maybe, cheer her up a bit; but we'll see, and so remember me to her, and good-bye!”
With these words and a sharp, bony wring of his hand. Bliss Betsy strode rapidly back to the village. It did not escape Gilbert's eye that, strongly as she had pronounced against his secret fear, the detection of it had agitated her. She had spoken hurriedly, and hastened away as if desiring to avoid further questions. He could not banish the suspicion that she knew something which might affect his fortune; but she had not forbidden his love for Martha—she had promised to help him, and that was a great consolation. His cheerfulness, thenceforth, was not assumed, and he rejoiced to see a very faint, shadowy reflection of it, at times, in his mother's face.
CHAPTER XV. — ALFRED BARTON BETWEEN TWO FIRES.
For some days after Dr. Deane's visit, Old-man Barton was a continual source of astonishment to his son Alfred and his daughter Ann. The signs of gradual decay which one of them, at least, had watched with the keenest interest, had suddenly disappeared; he was brighter, sharper, more talkative than at any time within the previous five years. The almost worn-out machinery of his life seemed to have been mysteriously repaired, whether by Dr. Deane's tinkering, or by one of those freaks of Nature which sometimes bring new teeth and hair to an aged head, neither the son nor the daughter could guess. To the former this awakened activity of the old man's brain was not a little annoying. He had been obliged to renew his note for the money borrowed to replace that which had been transferred to Sandy Flash, and in the mean time was concocting an ingenious device by which the loss should not entirely fall on his own half-share of the farm-profits. He could not have endured his father's tyranny without the delight of the cautious and wary revenges of this kind which he sometimes allowed himself to take. Another circumstance, which gave him great uneasiness, was this: the old man endeavored in various ways, both direct and indirect, to obtain knowledge of the small investments which he had made from time to time. The most of these had been, through the agency of the old lawyer at Chester, consolidated into a first-class mortgage; but it was Alfred's interest to keep his father in ignorance of the other sums, not because of their importance, but because of their insignificance. He knew that the old man's declaration was true,—“The more you have, the more you'll get!”
The following Sunday, as he was shaving himself at the back kitchen-window,—Ann being up-stairs, at her threadbare toilet,—Old Barton, who had been silent during breakfast, suddenly addressed him: