Opening a Chestnut Burr

by Edward Payson Roe

"I will look to Him, but I want you to lead me to Him, and keep me at
His side."

"I can do that just as well by being your friend."

"I can never think so. I shall go away from this place utterly disheartened unless you give me some hope, no matter how faint, that I shall not have to struggle alone."

She sprung up quickly, for he incensed her, while at the same time she pitied him. She could not understand how he had so soon learned to love her "deeply and truly." It rather appeared true that he had formed the mistaken opinion that she was essential to his success, and that he was bent upon bolstering himself up in his weakness, and sought to place her as a barrier between him and his old evil life; and she felt that he might need some wholesome truth rather than tender sympathy. At any rate her womanly nature took offence at his apparent motive, as she understood it—a motive that appeared more selfish and unworthy every moment. He was asking what he had no right to expect of any one. But she would not misunderstand him, and therefore said with a grave, searching look, "Only then as I give you the hope you ask for, will you make the effort you have promised to make?"

"Only then can I make it," he replied, in some confusion. "Can effort of any kind be asked of one utterly disabled?"

Sudden fire leaped into her dark eyes, but she said, with dignity, "Mr. Gregory, you disappoint me greatly. You assume a weakness—a disability—which does not and cannot exist under the circumstances. You made me a promise, but now impose a new condition which I did not dream of at the time, and which I cannot accept. You are asking more than you have a right to ask. However imperfect my efforts have been in your behalf, they were at least sincere and unselfish, and I was beginning to have a warm regard for you as a friend. I tell you frankly that I am most anxious that we should remain friends as before. If so, this kind of folly must cease now and forever. I have no right to listen to such words at all, and would not but for your sake, and in the hope of removing from your mind a very mistaken and unworthy idea. You are entirely wrong in thinking that your future depends solely upon me. It cannot—it ought not. It rests between you and God, and you cannot shift the responsibility. I am willing to do all you can ask of a sister, but no more. Do you think I have no needs, no weakness, myself? In a husband I want a man I can lean upon as well as help. I wish to marry one with a higher moral character than mine, to whom I can look up. There is the widest difference in the world between giving help, and even sincere affection to those who win it, and giving one's self away. Simple justice requires that my happiness and feelings be considered also. It is selfish in you to ask of me this useless sacrifice of myself."

Annie's quick, passionate nature was getting the better of her. It seemed in a certain sense disloyalty to Hunting to have listened thus long to Gregory. Moreover, not believing in nor understanding the latter's love for her, she was indignant that he should seek to employ her as a sort of stepping-stone into heaven. She would despise the man who sought her merely to advance his earthly interests, and she was growing honestly angry at Gregory, who, it seemed, wanted her only as a guide and staff in his pilgrimage—justly angry, too, if she were right.

Gregory became very pale as her words quivered in his heart like arrows, but in the consciousness of a true and unselfish love, he looked at her unfalteringly to the last, and said, "In justice to myself I might again urge that you misunderstand me. I asked for nothing now, only a hope for the future based on what I possibly might become. But, as you say, I now know I asked too much—more than I had a right to. You can never look up to me, and with a sadness you will never understand, I admit myself answered finally. But there is one imputation in your words that I cannot rest under. I solemnly assert before God, and in the name of my mother, that my love for you is as strong, pure, and unselfish as can exist in my half-wrecked nature."

"Oh dear!" exclaimed Annie, in a tone of mingled vexation and distress, "why has it all turned out so miserably? I'm so sorry, so very sorry; but in kindness I must show you how hopeless it all is. I am the same as engaged to another."

Gregory started violently. His despairing words had been not quite despairing. But now a chill like death settled about his heart. He was well satisfied that she was one who would be true as steel to all such ties, and that no man who had learned to know her would ever prove inconstant. But, with a white face and firmly compressed lips, he still listened quietly.