Old Ebenezer Part 25

"I rarely ever go down town at night," said the banker; "that is the reason of their uneasiness. Yes, the only cause, I a.s.sure you."

He pa.s.sed out into the hall, his wife following him. He took an umbrella from the rack, and preparing to hoist it, stepped out upon the veranda. His wife spoke to him and he started as if he had not noticed her. "James," she said, "something is wrong and you are deceiving me."

"Nothing at all, my dear," he replied, hoisting the umbrella. "The truth is, I want to see Sawyer."

"In relation to Mr. Lyman?" she asked, putting her hand on his arm to detain him.

"Well, yes, indirectly. The truth is, I authorized Zeb to offer him a sum of money to go away--quite too much I am sure--and I want to ask him to withdraw the offer. I can't afford to invest that much ready money at present, I really cannot."

"If you have been afraid that he will accept the offer--"

"What," he said, closing the umbrella and looking at her, "what do you know about it?"

"I know, or at least I believe, that he is not a man to be bribed,--to be turned from his purpose."

"His purpose. What is his purpose?"

"To claim his wife."

"Lucy, whatever you may be unreasonable enough to think, don't talk that way to me. He may claim her as his wife and may force his claim, but it will be after I am dead. I don't like the fellow personally. He is impudent; he is an anarchist. There now," he added, hoisting the umbrella, "go back and don't worry about me."

He stepped out upon the walk, and she stood in the door until he had pa.s.sed into the lane, into the heavy darkness of the trees. When she returned to the parlor the minister was preparing to take his leave.

"My mission in coming might have been discharged in a moment," he said; "but seeing that your husband was worried I did not like to bring it up in his presence. Young Henry Bostic is soon to preach over at Mt. Zion. I know that in this family a prejudice is felt against him, but he is deeply in earnest and I feel that it is your Christian duty, madam, to give him on that occasion the encouragement of your presence. He believes that he is inspired to preach the Word, and who, indeed, shall say that he is not? I have talked to him frequently of late, and I am convinced that toward this household he bears no malice."

"Eva and I will go," Mrs. McElwin replied promptly.

"n.o.bly said, madam," the minister rejoined, looking upon her with an eye that had swept over many a field of duty. "I did not believe that I should appeal to you in vain. We have but a little while here," he went on, his white head shaking. "The future has seemed far, but the past is short, and soon the time comes when we must go. They may dispute our creed and pick flaws in our doctrine, but they acknowledge the mighty truth of death. There is nothing in life worth living for--"

"Except love," said the girl standing beside him.

He put his tremulous hand upon her head, a withered leaf upon a flower in bloom. "Yes, my child, love which is G.o.d's spirit come down to earth."

He bade them good night, and for a long time they sat in silence.

"Sometimes," said the mother, "I feel a sudden strength, and I look up in surprise and see that it has come from you."

"I believe that I am developing," the daughter replied. "But I shall be strong if he asks me to go with him."

"What do you mean, my dear?"

"I mean that if he were to ask me, I would be strong enough to go."

"And leave me?"

"Leave the world--everything!"

"Why, my child, how can you talk so? Really, you alarm me. You scarcely know the man; you have met him but a few times, and then your talks with him were brief."

"I don't attempt to explain, mother. I simply know."

"But you must wait and see. It may be possible that he has no such feeling toward you; it may be that he has not permitted himself to aspire--"

"Oh," she cried, moving impatiently; "it is almost sacrilege to talk that way. Who am I that he should aspire to me? What have I done? What can I do? Nothing. I haven't a single talent, hardly an accomplishment. Oh, I know that I was intoxicated with vanity, but that has worn off. I am simply a country girl, that's all."

"You are a girl bewitched," said the mother, sadly.

CHAPTER XX.

AFRAID IN THE DARK.

McElwin hastened along the hard and slippery path that ran on a ridge at the side of the road. Sometimes a low-bending bough raked across his umbrella, and once he was made to start by a cold slap in his face, dealt by the broad leaf of a shrub that leaned and swayed above a garden fence. He came upon a wooden bridge over a small stream and halted to breathe, for his walk beneath the dark trees had been rapid and nervous. Frogs were croaking in the sluggish water. A cradle in a hovel b.u.mped upon the uneven floor, and he remembered to have heard from his father that in the pioneer days he had been many a time rocked to sleep in a sugar trough. The lights of the town, the few that he could see, looked red and angry. He remembered a newspaper account of the way-laying and robbing of a prominent citizen. It was so easy for a tramp to knock down an unsuspecting man. Tramp and robber were interchangeable terms with him, and often, on a cold night, when he had seen the wanderer's fire, kindled close to the railway track, he had wondered why such license had been allowed in a law-abiding community. He moved off with a brisk step, for he fancied that he heard something under the bridge. There was many a worse man than McElwin, but it is doubtful whether a ranker coward had ever been born to see the light of day, or to shy at an odd shape in the dark.

He felt an easy-breathing sense of relief when he reached the main street, and in the light of the tavern lamp, hung out in front, he was bold; his head went up and his heels fell with measured firmness upon the bricks. He halted in front of his bank, as his own clock was striking ten, and looked up at Lyman's window. The room was dim, but the other part of the floor, the long room, was bright. He was afraid to show anxiety concerning either Sawyer or Lyman, nor did he deem it advisable to call at old Jasper's house. For what purpose had he come, he then asked himself. He must do something to pay himself for coming, to make himself feel that his time had not been utterly thrown away.

In his arrangement of economy, every piece of time must show either an actual or a possible result. To go even in the direction of old Jasper's house was out of the question, for if anyone should see him he would surely be a.s.sociated with the White Caps. Why would it not be a wise move to find out whether or not Lyman was in the printing-office, and to warn him. He could easily put his call upon the ground of an argument against the impulsive man's rashness in burning the check. No, that would invite the ill-will and perhaps the outright enmity of Sawyer. He could not afford to lose Sawyer; he needed his energy for the future and the use of his money for the present. But he could bind Lyman to secrecy. "I wonder," he mused, "that I should have any faith in his word, but I have. Confound him, he has upset us all. But I ought to warn him. It is terrible to be taken out and whipped upon the bare back. I'll make him promise and then I'll tell him."

He crossed the street and began slowly to climb the stairs. He reached the first landing and halted. "It won't do," he said. "Sawyer might find it out and that would ruin everything. I advised against it; I have done my best to prevent it, and it is now no concern of mine. I will go home. I have been foolish."

He turned about and walked rapidly down the stairs. When he reached home his daughter had gone to bed, but his wife was sitting up, waiting for him. She met him at the door and looked at him, searchingly, as he halted in the light of the hall lamp to put the umbrella in the rack.

"Did you see him?" she asked, not in the best of humor, now that the worry was practically over.

"Sawyer? No, he's out in the country, so a man told me. I have decided to dismiss the matter from my mind or to think about it as little as possible. It isn't so very late yet," he added, looking at his watch.

He found his slippers beside his chair when he entered the sitting-room, but he shoved them away with his foot.

"Did Mr. Menifee have anything of interest to say?" he asked, leaning with his elbows on the table.

"It may not interest you, but it has been put to Eva and me as a matter of duty, that we ought to go out to Mt. Zion to hear Henry Bostic preach."

McElwin grunted: "Menifee may put it as a matter of duty, but I don't. Fortunately I have other duties that are of much more importance. I will not go."

"He didn't seem to expect that you would," she replied.

"I hope not. He may have reason to believe me worldly in some things, but I trust he has never found me ridiculous."

"Would it be ridiculous to hear that young man preach?"

"For me to hear him? Decidedly. The true gospel has not been handed over to the keeping of the malicious idiot, I hope."

"I believe he is sincere."

"Sincere? Of course he is. So is a wasp when it stings you."

She laughed in her dignified way, her good humor having suddenly returned; and he looked up with a smile, pleased with himself. They sat for a time, talking of other matters, and he went to bed humming the defineless tune of self-satisfaction. But late in the night Mrs.

McElwin awoke and found him standing at the window, listening.

"What is it, dear?" she asked.