Chapter 26

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_ CHAPTER XXVI

"Lawrence," said Annie, on the forenoon of the next day, as they were sitting together in the parlor with the house to themselves, Mrs Keswick having gone to Aunt Patsy's cabin to supervise proceedings there, "Lawrence, don't you feel glad that we did not have a chance to speak to dear old Aunt Patsy about those little shoes? Perhaps she had forgotten that she had stolen them, and so went to heaven without that sin on her soul."

"That is a very comfortable way of looking at it," said Lawrence, "but wouldn't it be better to assume that she did not steal them?"

"I am very sorry," said Annie, "but that is not easy to do. But don't let us think anything more about that. And, don't you feel very glad that the poor old creature, who looked so happy as she sat singing and clapping her hands on her knees, didn't die until after we had left the church? If it had happened while we were there, I don't believe--"

"Don't believe what?" asked Lawrence.

"Well, that you now would be sitting with your arm on the back of my chair."

Lawrence was quite sure, from what had been told him, that Aunt Patsy's demise had taken place before they left the church, but he did not say so to Annie. He merely took his arm from the back of her chair, and placed it around her.

"And do you know," said she, "that Letty told me something, this morning, that is so funny and yet in a certain way so pathetic, that it made me laugh and cry both. She said that Aunt Patsy always thought that you were Mr Null."

At this, Lawrence burst out laughing, but Annie checked him and went on; "And she told Letty in church, when she saw us two come in, that she believed she could die happy now, since she had seen Miss Annie married to such a peart gentleman, and that it looked as if old miss had got over her grudge against him."

"And didn't Letty undeceive her?" asked Lawrence.

"No, she said it would be a pity to upset the mind of such an old woman, and she didn't do it."

"Then the good Aunt Patsy died," said Lawrence, "thinking I was that wretched tramp of a bone-dust pedler, which the fancy of your aunt has conjured up. That explains the interest the venerable colored woman took in me. It is now quite easy to understand; for, if your aunt abused your mythical husband to everybody, as she did to me, I don't wonder Aunt Patsy thought I was in danger."

"Poor old woman," said Annie, looking down at the floor, "I am so glad that we helped her to die happy."

"As she was obliged to anticipate the truth," said Lawrence, "in order to derive any comfort from it, I am glad she did it. But although I am delighted, more than my words can tell you, to take the place of your Mr Null, you must not expect me to have any of his attributes."

"Now just listen to me, sir," said Annie. "I don't want you to say one word against Mr Null. If it had not been for that good Freddy, things would have been very different from what they are now. If you care for me at all, you owe me entirely to Freddy Null."

"Entirely?" asked Lawrence.

"Of course I mean in regard to opportunities of finding out things and saying them. If Aunt Keswick had supposed I was only Annie Peyton, she would not have allowed Mr Croft to interfere with her plans for Junius and me. I expected Mr Null to be of service to me, but no one could have imagined that he would have brought about anything like this."

"Blessed be Null!" exclaimed Lawrence.

Annie asked him to please to be more careful, for how did he know that one of the servants might not be sweeping the front porch, and of course, they would look in at the windows.

"But, my dear child," said Lawrence, pushing back his chair to a prudent distance, "we must seriously consider this Null business. We shall have to inform your aunt of the present state of affairs, and before we do that, we must explain what sort of person Frederick Null, Esquire, really was--I am not willing to admit that he exists, even as a myth."

"Oh dear! oh dear!" exclaimed Annie. "We shall have a dreadful time! When Aunt Keswick knows that there never was any Mr Null, and then hears that you and I are engaged, it will throw her into the most dreadful state of mind that she has ever been in, in her life; and father has told me of some of the awful family earthquakes that Aunt Keswick has brought about, when things went wrong with her."

"We must be very cautious," said Lawrence, "and neither of us must say a word, or do anything that may arouse her suspicions, until we have settled upon the best possible method of making the facts known to her. The case is indeed a complicated one."

"And what makes it more so," said Annie, "is Aunt Keswick's belief that you are in love with Miss March, and that you want to get a chance to propose to her. She does think that, doesn't she?"

"Yes," said Lawrence, "I must admit that she does."

"And she must be made to understand that that is entirely at an end," continued Annie. "All this will be a very difficult task, Lawrence, and I don't see how it is to be done."

"But we shall do it," he answered, "and we must not forget to be very prudent, until it is fully settled how we shall do it."

When Lawrence retired to his room, and sat down to hold that peculiar court in which he was judge, jury, lawyers, and witnesses, as well as the prisoner at the bar, he had to do with a case, a great deal more complicated and difficult than that which perplexed the mind of Miss Annie Peyton. He began by the very unjudicial act of pledging himself, to himself, that nothing should interfere with this new, this true love. In spite of all that might be said, done, or thought, Annie Peyton should be his wife. There was no indecision, whatever, in regard to the new love; the only question was: "What is to be done about the old one?"

Lawrence could not admit, for a moment, that he could have spoken to Roberta March as he had spoken, if he had not loved her; but he could now perceive that that love had been in no small degree impaired and weakened by the manner of its acceptance. The action of Miss March on her last day here had much more chilled his ardor than her words on Pine Top Hill. He had not, before, examined thoroughly into the condition of that ardor after the departure of the lady, but it was plain enough now.

There was, therefore, no doubt whatever in regard to his love for Miss March; he was quite ready and able to lay that aside. But what about her acceptance of it? How could he lay that aside?

This was the real case before the court. The witnesses could give no available testimony, the lawyers argued feebly, the jury disagreed, and Lawrence, in his capacity of judge, dismissed the case. In his efforts to conduct his mind through the channels of law and equity, Lawrence had not satisfied himself, and his thoughts began to be moved by what might be termed his military impulses. "I made a charge into the camp," he said with a little downward drawing of the corners of his mouth, "and I did not capture the commander-in-chief. And now I intend to charge out again."

He sat down to his table, and wrote the following note:

"My Dear Miss March:

"I have been waiting for a good many days, hoping to receive, either from you or Mr Keswick, an explanation of the message you sent to me by him. I now believe that it will be impossible to give a satisfactory explanation of that message. I therefore recur to our last private interview, and wish to say to you that I am ready, at any time, to meet you under either a sycamore or a cherry tree."

And then he signed it, and addressed it to Miss March at Midbranch. This being done, he put on his hat, and stepped out to see if a messenger could be found to carry the letter to its destination, for he did not wish to wait for the semi-weekly mail. Near the house he met Annie.

"What have you been doing all this time?" she asked.

"I have been writing a letter," he said, "and am now looking for some colored boy who will carry it for me."

"Who is it to?" she asked.

"Miss March," was his answer.

"Let me see it," said Annie.

At this, Lawrence looked at her with wide-open eyes, and then he laughed. Never, since he had been a child, had there been any one who would have thought of such a thing as asking to see a private letter which he had written to some one else; and that this young girl should stand up before him with her straightforward expectant gaze and make such a request of him, in the first instance, amused him.

"You don't mean to say," she added, "that you would write anything to Miss March which you would not let me see."

"This letter," said Lawrence, "was written for Miss March, and no one else. It is simply the winding up of that old affair."

"Give it to me," said Annie, "and let me see how you wound it up."

Lawrence smiled, looked at her in silence for a moment, and then handed her the letter.

"I don't want you to think," she said, as she took it, "that I am going to ask you to show me all the letters you write. But when you write one to a lady like Miss March, I want to know what you say to her." And then she read the letter. When she had finished, she turned to Lawrence, and with her countenance full of amazement, exclaimed: "I haven't the least idea in the world what all this means! What message did she send you? And why should you meet her under a tree?"

These questions went so straight to the core of the affair, and were so peculiarly difficult to answer, that Lawrence, for the moment, found himself in the very unusual position of not knowing what to say, but he presently remarked: "Do you think it is of any advantage to either of us to talk over this affair, which is now past and gone?"

"I don't want to talk over any of it," said Annie, very promptly, "except the part of it which is referred to in this letter; but I want to know about that."

"That covers the most important part of it," said Lawrence.

"Very good," she answered, "and so you can tell it to me. And now, that I think of it, you can tell me, at the same time, why you wanted to find my cousin Junius. You refused once to tell me that, you know."

"I remember," said Lawrence. "And if you have the least feeling about it I will relate the whole affair, from beginning to end."

"That, perhaps, will be the best thing to do, after all," said Annie. "And suppose we take a walk over the fields, and then you can tell it without being interrupted."

But Lawrence did not feel that his ankle would allow him to accept this invitation, for it had hurt him a good deal since his walk to Aunt Patsy's cabin. He said so to Annie, and excited in her the deepest feelings of commiseration.

"You must take no more walks of any length," she exclaimed, "until you are quite, quite well! It was my fault that you took that tramp to Aunt Patsy's. I ought to have known better. But then," she said, looking up at him, "you were not under my charge. I shall take very good care of you now."

"For my part," he said, "I am glad I have this little relapse, for now I can stay here longer."

"I am very, very sorry for the relapse," said she, "but awfully glad for the stay. And you mustn't stand another minute. Let us go and sit in the arbor. The sun is shining straight into it, and that will make it all the more comfortable, while you are telling me about those things."

They sat down in the arbor, and Lawrence told Annie the whole history of his affair with Miss March, from the beginning to the end; that is if the end had been reached; although he intimated to her no doubt upon this point. This avowal he had never expected to make. In fact he had never contemplated its possibility. But now he felt a certain satisfaction in telling it. Every item, as it was related, seemed thrown aside forever. "And now then, my dear Annie," he said, when he had finished, "what do you think of all that?"

"Well," she said, "in the first place, I am still more of the opinion than I was before, that you never were really in love with her. You did entirely too much planning, and investigating, and calculating; and when, at last, you did come to the conclusion to propose to her, you did not do it so much of your own accord, as because you found that another man would be likely to get her, if you did not make a pretty quick move yourself. And as to that acceptance, I don't think anything of it at all. I believe she was very angry at Junius because he consented to bring your messages, when he ought to have been his own messenger, and that she gave him that answer just to rack his soul with agony. I don't believe she ever dreamed that he would take it to you. And, to tell the simple truth, I believe, from what I saw of her that morning, that she was thinking very little of you, and a great deal of him. To be sure, she was fiery angry with him, but it is better to be that way with a lover, than to pay no attention to him at all."

This was a view of the case which had never struck Lawrence before, and although it was not very flattering to him, it was very comforting. He felt that it was extremely likely that this young woman had been able to truthfully divine, in a case in which he had failed, the motives of another young woman. Here was a further reason for congratulating himself that he had not written to Miss March.

"And as to the last part of the letter," said Annie, "you are not going under any cherry tree, or sycamore either, to be refused by her. What she said to you was quite enough for a final answer, without any signing or sealing under trees, or anywhere else. I think the best thing that can be done with this precious epistle is to tear it up."

Lawrence was amused by the piquant earnestness of this decision. "But what am I to do," he asked, "I can't let the matter rest in this unfinished and unsatisfactory condition."

"You might write to her," said Annie, "and tell her that you have accepted what she said to you on Pine Top Hill as a conclusive answer, and that you now take back everything you ever said on the subject you talked of that day. And do you think it would be well to put in anything about your being otherwise engaged?"

At this Lawrence laughed. "I think that expression would hardly answer," he said, "but I will write another note, and we shall see how you like it."

"That will be very well," said the happy Annie, "and if I were you I'd make it as gentle as I could. It's of no use to hurt her feelings."

"Oh, I don't want to do that," said Lawrence, "and now that we have the opportunity, let us consider the question of informing your aunt of our engagement."

"Oh dear, dear, dear!" said Annie, "that is a great deal worse than informing Miss March that you don't want to be engaged to her."

"That is true," said Lawrence. "It is not by any means an easy piece of business. But we might as well look it square in the face, and determine what is to be done about it."

"It is simple enough, just as we look at it," said Annie. "All we have to do, is to say that, knowing that Aunt Keswick had written to my father that she was determined to make a match between cousin Junius and me, I was afraid to come down here without putting up some insurmountable obstacle between me and a man that I had not seen since I was a little girl. Of course I would say, very decidedly, that I wouldn't have married him if I hadn't wanted to; but then, considering Aunt Keswick's very open way of carrying out her plans, it would have been very unpleasant, and indeed impossible for me to be in the house with him unless she saw that there was no hope of a marriage between us; and for this reason I took the name of Mrs Null, or Mrs Nothing; and came down here, secure under the protection of a husband who never existed. And then, we could say that you and I were a good deal together, and that, although you had supposed, when you came here, that you were in love with Miss March, you had discovered that this was a mistake, and that afterwards we fell in love with each other, and are now engaged. That would be a straightforward statement of everything, just as it happened; but the great trouble is: How are we going to tell it to Aunt Keswick?"

"You are right," said Lawrence. "How are we going to tell it?"

"It need not be told!" thundered a strong voice close to their ears. And then there was a noise of breaking lattice-work and cracking vines, and through the back part of the arbor came an old woman wearing a purple sun-bonnet, and beating down all obstacles before her with a great purple umbrella. "You needn't tell it!" cried Mrs Keswick, standing in the middle of the arbor, her eyes glistening, her form trembling, and her umbrella quivering in the air. "You needn't tell it! It's told!"

Graphic and vivid descriptions have been written of those furious storms of devastating wind and deluging rain, which suddenly sweep away the beauty of some fair tropical scene; and we have read, too, of dreadful cyclones and tornadoes, which rush, in mad rage, over land and sea, burying great ships in a vast tumult of frenzied waves, or crushing to the earth forests, buildings, everything that may lie in their awful paths; but no description could be written which could give an adequate idea of the storm which now burst upon Lawrence and Annie. The old lady had seen these two standing together in the yard, conversing most earnestly. She had then seen Annie read a letter that Lawrence gave her; and then she had perceived the two, in close converse, enter the arbor, and sit down together without the slightest regard for the rights of Mr Null.

Mrs Keswick looked upon all this as somewhat more out-of-the-way than the usual proceedings of these young people, and there came into her mind a curiosity to know what they were saying to each other. So she immediately repaired to the large garden, and quietly made her way to the back of the arbor, in which advantageous position she heard the whole of Lawrence's story of his love-affair with Miss March; Annie's remarks upon the same, and the facts of this young lady's proposed confession in regard to her marriage with Mr Null, and her engagement to Mr Croft.

Then she burst in upon them; the tornado and the cyclone raged; the thunder rolled and crashed; and the white lightning of her wrath flashed upon the two, as if it would scathe and annihilate them, as they stood before her. Neither of them had ever known or imagined anything like this. It had been long since Mrs Keswick had had an opportunity of exercising that power of vituperative torment, which had driven a husband to the refuge of a reverted pistol; which had banished, for life, relatives and friends; and which, in the shape of a promissory curse, had held apart those who would have been husband and wife; and now, like the long stored up venom of a serpent, it burst out with the direful force given by concentration and retention.

At the first outburst, Annie had turned pale and shrunk back, but now she clung to the side of Lawrence, who, although his face was somewhat blanched and his form trembled a little with excitement, still stood up bravely, and endeavored, but ineffectually, to force upon the old lady's attention a denial of her bitter accusations. With face almost as purple as the bonnet she wore, or the umbrella she shook in the air, the old lady first addressed her niece. With scorn and condemnation she spoke of the deceit which the young girl had practised upon her. But this part of the exercises was soon over. She seemed to think that although nothing could be viler than Annie's conduct towards her, still the fact that Mr Null no longer existed, put Annie again within her grasp and control, and made it unnecessary to say much to her on this occasion. It was upon Lawrence that the main cataract of her fury poured. It would be wrong to say that she could not find words to express her ire towards him. She found plenty of them, and used them all. He had deceived her most abominably; he had come there, the expressed and avowed lover of Miss March; he had connived with her niece in her deceit; he had taken advantage of all the opportunities she gave him to attain the legitimate object of his visit, to inveigle into his snares this silly and absurd young woman; and he had dared to interfere with the plans, which, by day and by night, she had been maturing for years. In vain did Lawrence endeavor to answer or explain. She stopped not, nor listened to one word.

"And you need not imagine," she screamed at him, "that you are going to turn round, when you like, and marry anybody you please. You are engaged, body and soul, to Roberta March, and have no right, by laws of man or heaven, to marry anybody else. If you breathe a word of love to any other woman it makes you a vile criminal in the eyes of the law, and renders you liable to prosecution, sir. Your affianced bride knows nothing of what her double-faced snake of a lover is doing here, but she shall know speedily. That is a matter which I take into my own hands. Out of my way, both of you!"

And with these words she charged by them, and rushed out of the arbor, and into the house. _

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