CHAPTER XXV
KNOW YE THE TRUTH
That night Belle-Ann indited a letter to her father, dwelling upon the kindness of Miss Worth, who had proposed to give her a higher education. She told of her delightful visit to Lexington and of the beautiful present Colonel Tennytown had given to her. She asked again, as she always did, if he had heard anything from Lem.
She also ventured another letter to Lem. During the past winter she had written several letters to him; as yet, she had received no answer to these. However, she supposed they were still uncalled for. She knew that Lem could write sufficiently legible for her to decipher it, but she also remembered the fact that the nearest post-office was thirty miles distant from Moon mountain. Moreover, she knew Lem was not accustomed to visiting Junction City, because he never received any mail, and because the denizens of Junction City were rank sympathizers with the McGill faction.
And always she yearned for sight of Lem's honest face. Not a day passed but what she cherished thoughts of home. When she was apparently in her gayest mood, Lem's tall shadow stood in the background waiting for her—always waiting. While occupied in her tensest study hours, down in her subconsciousness lay a memory that stirred like a thing having life. And ever more overshadowing this dominating vision of Lem Lutts was the haunting presence of the revenuer. From her waking hours these thoughts trailed into the night to pollute her dreams and, not infrequently, pilfer her sleep away.
Oft times, in the presence of others, she would abruptly lower her book or suspend anything at hand, only to come out of an ill reverie, to find her eyes fixed blankly at nothing, and her lip in the grip of her upper teeth. These uncontrollable abstractions had caused her many embarrassments and had grown upon her, as the months slipped by, instead of diminishing.
Now that she stood on the threshold of a new life, a mystic, fascinating world, the vague dreams of which had gesticulated and beckoned to her childish fancy in the hills, foretelling its beautiful emoluments of which she now had dazzling, palpitating glimpses—she was dismayed at her own disquietude. She had made very many dear friends. She had an array of beautiful clothes. She was forgivably conscious, without vanity, that she was an unusually beautiful girl. The refinements of education for which she had an inbred craving were filtering into her brain with the mellow, rich residue of a rare wine. The whole atmosphere that enveloped her was charged with all the pedagogic influences and wholesome blithesomeness calculated to inspire a girl of her temperament to utter happiness.
But Belle-Ann was not happy. The fear that had eroded its path into her being stood over her young life to menace and alloy every new-born pleasure. Her soul trembled now lest the revenuer had killed Lem instead. Then her life would not only be broken, but the revenuer would still live on to project his hated shadow across her heart, and her agony would go on and on with another and more potential impetus.
When the human heart throbs against the barbs of an eating agony through a measure of years, there comes a time when the soul staggers and cries out.
One night Miss Worth awoke and following a habit, she got up and slipped across the hall, bent on seeing if Belle-Ann were sitting up in bed with her books, as was her wont.