Opening a Chestnut Burr

by Edward Payson Roe

In his solitary ramble, Gregory again thought long and deeply over the situation. The impression was growing strong that the supreme hour of his life, which would decide his destiny for good or evil, was fast approaching. For years previously he had given up the struggle against the latter, and had sunk deep in moral apathy, making greater effort to doubt everything concerning God than to believe. Then he had lost even his earthly ambition, and become mere driftwood on the tide of time. But a sweet, true woman was doing a work for him like that of Elsie for Prince Henry in the Golden Legend. A consciousness of power to take up his burden again and be a man among men was coming back, and old Daddy Tuggar's words were growing into a hope-inspiring prophecy: "She could take the wickedest man livin' to heaven, if she'd stay right by him."

And yet his self-distrust was painfully and dangerously great, and he feared that when Annie came to know the worst about him, and how he had plotted against her, she would shrink from him. If she despaired of him he would despair of himself. He was certain that he could not win even an intimate congenial acquaintance, much less a more tender regard, unless he became a true, good man, worthy of her confidence. He could not become such by commencing in deception—by hiding the past, and trying to appear what he was not. For in the first place she would certainly find him out and despise him, and in the second place his own nature now revolted at anything false in his relations with her. After long anxious thought, he concluded that the only safe, as well as the only honorable, course was perfect frankness. If he began wrong, the end would be disastrous. He was no longer subject to school-boy impulses, but was a mature and thoughtful man, and had trained himself in business to look far and keenly into the consequences of present action. He saw in this Walton blood an intense antipathy to deceit. His own nature was averse to it also, and his experience with Hunting had made it doubly hateful. His pride revolted at it, for his lack of hypocrisy had been the one ground of self-respect that remained in him. If in his folly and wickedness he had blotted out the possibility of a happy future, he must endure the terrible truth as he could. To try to steal into heaven, earthly or celestial, by the back door of specious seeming, only to be discovered in his true character and cast out with greater ignominy, was a course as revolting as foolish. Annie knew him to be a man of the world, with sceptical tendencies, but to her guileless nature and inexperience this might not mean anything very bad. In the secret of his own soul, however, he had to meet these terrible questions:

"Can God receive and pardon a willing unbeliever, a man who has sinned against the clearest light, a gambler, a libertine, an embodiment of selfishness? Can it be that Annie Walton will ever receive even friendship from one so stained, knowing the additional fact that I plotted against her and sought for my own senseless gratification to prove that she was a weak, vain woman, who would be no better than myself if tempted in like manner? It is true that I never betrayed innocence or wronged a man out of a dollar. It is true that in the code of the world I have done nothing to lose my character as a gentleman, and even my design upon Miss Walton would pass as a harmless flirtation in society; but the code of the world has no force in her pure mind, and the license it permits is an insult to the law of God. And now it is not with the world, but with her and Heaven that I have to deal. Things at which society shrugs its shoulders indifferently are to them crimes, and black ones too. I might as well seek her love with a felon's indictment hanging over me as to seek it hiding my past life. When she came to find me out she would feel that I had wronged her unutterably, and confidence, the only basis of lasting esteem, would be gone.

"Deep in my heart I have never doubted my mother's faith. When I imagined I did I was self-deceived. Everything here confirms it, and Miss Walton more than all. I will consult the divine oracle. She shall be the fair vestal, the gentle priestess. She lives near to heaven, and knows its mind. If her kind and womanly nature shrinks from me, if she coldly draws her skirts aside that I pollute them not even with a touch—if she by word or even manner proves that she sees an impassable gulf between us—then she need waste no breath in homilies over repentance and in saying that God can receive those whom man cannot. I'll not even listen, but go back to the city and meet my fate. If imperfect human creatures cannot forgive each other—if I have gone so far beyond the mercy of a tender-hearted woman—then I need look for nothing from a just and holy God. It's mockery for good people, with horror and disgust slightly veiled upon their faces, to tell poor wretches that God will receive them and love them, while they would no more take them into their confidence and esteem than they would a pestilence. It's like people saying to one in the last stage of consumption, 'I hope you will be better soon.' They don't hope or expect any such thing. The Bible is said to teach that a man can sin away his day of grace. I had about believed that I had sinned away mine. This genuine, honest Christian girl has made me think differently. She has inspired the strong hope that she could lead me to become a good man—even a Christian. She shall either fulfil that hope or show it to be false."

Such was the outline of his thoughts that long day, during which hope and fear balanced an even scale. But the evening shadows found fear predominating. His awakened conscience and his recent contact with true moral standards revealed him to himself in darker and still darker shadow. At times he was almost ready to despair, to bid his entertainers a courteous farewell on Monday, and go back to the city as he came, with the additional wretchedness of having seen the heaven he could not enter.

But when he came down to supper, Annie smiled so sweetly and looked so gentle and kind, that he thought, "She does not seem one to push a wretch over a precipice. That warm little hand that charmed away my headache so gently cannot write Dante's inscription over my 'Inferno,' and bid me enter it as 'my own place'; and yet I dread her sense of justice."

In his anxiety and perturbation of mind he was unusually grave and silent during the meal and evening. Annie exulted secretly over him.

"He is thinking in earnest now. His old apathy and trifling manner are gone."

He was indeed thinking in terrible earnest. Her effort had awakened no school-girl interest and penitence that she could soothe and reward by quoting a few sweet promises, but had aroused a spirit like that which came down from the hills of Gadara, and which no man could bind.

Men and women in good society may be very polished and refined, and yet their souls in God's sight and their own be shameful, "naked," wearing no robe of righteousness, bound by no laws of purity and right, and "always, night and day, crying and cutting" themselves in the unrest of remorse. Sad and yet true it was that the demon-possessed man, the terror of the Gadarenes, was but too true a type of the gentlemanly and elegant Walter Gregory, as he sat that night in a torment of dread and hope at the peaceful fireside of a Christian family. If his fears were realized—if Annie turned from him when he revealed his true self to her—there seemed to him every probability that evil evermore would be his master. While she was innocently hoping and praying that her words and influence might lead him to read his Bible, go to church, and eventually find his way into the "green pastures beside the still waters," it seemed that within a few hours she would either avert or complete that most awful of tragedies—the loss of a soul.