Round Anvil Rock A Romance

XV

THE WEB THAT SEEMED TO BE WO­VEN

The fan­cy pleased Fa­ther Orin, and he spoke jest­ing­ly to To­by about it, re­mind­ing him, how­ev­er, se­ri­ous­ly enough, that it was on­ly in vi­sions that there could be any such di­rect pass­ing from earth to heav­en.

“For you see, old man, there's a place on the way where most of us must tar­ry a while. Maybe you might be able to pass by and go straight on. I am afraid there wouldn't be much of a chance for me.”

But they were both still far from their long, hard jour­ney's end on that gloomy Novem­ber evening. They were mere­ly turn­ing a lit­tle aside from their usu­al broad path for a still wider ser­vice to hu­man­ity. They had not seen the doc­tor that day, and there was al­ways rea­son to fear that he might at any mo­ment fall a vic­tim to the epi­dem­ic which he was cease­less­ly fight­ing, so that they were now go­ing in some anx­iety to see what had kept him away from the places in which they were used to see­ing him. They were both very tired, yet To­by, nev­er­the­less, quick­ened his weary pace at a gen­tle hint from Fa­ther Orin, and they got to the doc­tor's house just as the sun went down be­hind the cot­ton­woods on the oth­er shore.

The cab­in stood near the riv­er bank. It was a sin­gle room of logs, rough with­out and bare with­in. The doc­tor was not very poor, as pover­ty and rich­es were con­sid­ered in the wilder­ness, hav­ing in­her­it­ed a mod­est for­tune. But he was gen­er­ous and char­ita­ble, and had gone from Vir­ginia in­to Ken­tucky with an earnest wish to serve his kind. And then his ac­quain­tance with Fa­ther Orin had brought him in close con­tact with want as well as suf­fer­ing, and would have giv­en him good us­es for larg­er means than his own. Yet rude and emp­ty as the cab­in was, there were traces of re­fine­ment here and there, as there al­ways must be wher­ev­er true re­fine­ment dwells. A minia­ture of his moth­er, whom he could not re­mem­ber, hung against the logs at the head of his bed. There were a few good books on a rough shelf, and a spray of au­tumn leaves lay on the ta­ble. The beau­ty of the leaves had drawn him to break the spray from the bough and bring it home. But he had for­got­ten it as soon as he had laid it down on the ta­ble, and the leaves were with­er­ing as he sat be­side them with his head bowed up­on his hands.

The man of con­science, who cares for the bod­ies of his kind, bears al­most as heavy a bur­den as he who cares for their souls. He must ev­ery­where, and un­rest­ing­ly, fight ig­no­rance and prej­udice with one hand, while he strives to heal with the oth­er, and this dou­ble strife was fiercer in the wilder­ness, just at that time, than al­most any­where else with­in the fur­thest reach of sci­ence. On first com­ing he had found more peo­ple be­ing killed by calomel and jalap than by the plague. At ev­ery turn he en­coun­tered this bane of the coun­try which was called cal­lomy-​jal­lopy, and at that mo­ment he was ut­ter­ly worn out, body and soul, by a strug­gle to save the life of a man who had ig­no­rant­ly poi­soned him­self by drink­ing some acid af­ter tak­ing the dose. This was not his first ex­pe­ri­ence of the kind; but he had met the oth­er tri­als with the high courage of a light heart and a free mind. It was on­ly with­in the last two days that he had been weighed down by dis­cour­age­ment, by heav­iness of heart, and de­pres­sion of mind. He was so weary and ab­sorbed now in dis­heart­ened thought, that he did not hear To­by's ap­proach, and he was star­tled when Fa­ther Orin ap­peared in the open door. He greet­ed him with a warm­ly out­stretched hand, but did not say that he was glad to see him; they were too good friends for emp­ty phras­es, such good friends that they sat down silent­ly, nei­ther need­ing a word to know the oth­er's sad­ness. It was the priest who fi­nal­ly broke the si­lence.

“You are trou­bled, my son,” he said, qui­et­ly and gen­tly. “I see there is some­thing be­sides the trou­ble which touch­es us all--this ter­ror of what is com­ing on the oth­er side of the riv­er. I see that there is some­thing else--some clos­er trou­ble of your own. If you wish to tell me about it, I will do what I can to help you; but you know this with­out be­ing told.”

He had spo­ken at the right mo­ment, for there are mo­ments in the lives of the most re­served and self-​re­liant when the heart must speak to ease the mind. Paul Col­bert was a Protes­tant, and so firm and strong in his faith that he was ready at all times to de­fend it, to fight for it; yet this mo­ment, which has noth­ing to do with any creed, had come to him, and he spoke as one man speaks to an­oth­er whom he trusts and knows to be his friend. He told what he was suf­fer­ing, and the cause of his wretched­ness. He spoke of his first meet­ing with Ruth, and of the love for her that had leapt up in his heart at the first glimpse of her face, be­fore he had heard her voice, be­fore he knew her name. He said how hap­py he was when chance put her in his arms through that wild night's ride. He de­scribed his vis­it to her on the next day, and said how far he was from sus­pect­ing that William Press­ley was more than a mem­ber of the same fam­ily. He went on to speak of the oth­er vis­its which he had paid to Ruth, telling how fast his love had grown with ev­ery meet­ing. He end­ed with the rev­ela­tion at the dance in the woods.

“But it wouldn't have made any dif­fer­ence had I known soon­er. It couldn't have made any dif­fer­ence in my lov­ing her,” he said. “I must have loved her just the same no mat­ter when or how we might have met. Noth­ing ev­er could have al­tered that. I am afraid that I couldn't have helped lov­ing her had she been an­oth­er man's wife. I am keep­ing noth­ing back, you see, Fa­ther. I am telling you the whole truth. But per­haps it wouldn't have been quite so hard to bear, had I known at the very first. It can hard­ly be so hard to give up hap­pi­ness when we have nev­er dared long for it. And I knew no rea­son why I might not try to make her love me. As it is, from this time on, ev­ery thought of her must be like con­stant­ly try­ing to kill some suf­fer­ing thing that can nev­er die!”

He dropped his head on his arm which lay on the ta­ble. The priest gen­tly laid his hand on the thick, brown hair.

“My son,” he mur­mured.

“If the man that she is to mar­ry were on­ly dif­fer­ent,” Paul groaned. “If he were on­ly more wor­thy, if I could on­ly think that she would be hap­py.”

He did not know that he was mere­ly say­ing what ev­ery un­for­tu­nate lover has thought since love and the world be­gan; and it was a sad smile that touched the sym­pa­thy of Fa­ther Orin's face.

“William Press­ley is not a bad young fel­low,” the priest said. “He means well. He lives up­right­ly ac­cord­ing to his dull, nar­row ideas of right. And none of us can do any bet­ter than to live up to our own ide­als. It's a good deal more than most of us do. I am afraid he is self­ish,” with the hes­ita­tion which he al­ways felt in pro­nounc­ing judg­ment up­on any one; “but then most of us men are, and maybe he will not be self­ish to­ward her, for he must be fond of her. Ev­ery­body loves the child.”

“But about her--is she fond of him? How can she be?”

“I can't an­swer for that. There's no telling about a girl's fan­cy; in fact, I have nev­er giv­en the en­gage­ment a thought. It was all set­tled; it seemed a good, suit­able ar­range­ment--”

“Ar­range­ment!” groaned Paul.

Fa­ther Orin shook his head. “It was most like­ly Philip Al­ston who brought it about. He doubt­less thought it a wise choice for both the young peo­ple. He cer­tain­ly nev­er would have con­sent­ed if he had not be­lieved it to be for Ruth's hap­pi­ness--that al­ways comes first with him in ev­ery­thing.”

Paul Col­bert sat up sud­den­ly, throw­ing back his hair, and looked at the priest with a clear­ing gaze. All the ques­tions which he had been wish­ing to ask now rushed to his lips. What was Ruth's re­la­tion to Philip Al­ston? What right had he to choose her hus­band? What was his in­flu­ence over William Press­ley? What was his hold up­on Judge Knox? What was this pow­er that he wield­ed over the whole fam­ily of Cedar House?

“He is no re­la­tion to her, is he? He isn't even her guardian. And William Press­ley is an hon­est man, isn't he, even though such a solemn, pompous prig? He can hard­ly be a con­fed­er­ate of coun­ter­feit­ers, forg­ers, rob­bers, and mur­der­ers. And a sin­gle look at the judge's face shows him to be the most up­right of men; his open, unswerv­ing hon­esty of thought and deed, can­not be doubt­ed. How is it, then, that Philip Al­ston can move all these hon­or­able and in­tel­li­gent peo­ple to suit his vil­lanous pur­pos­es, as if they were pawns in a game of chess?”

“Ah, you don't know much about Philip Al­ston. You have met him on­ly once--yet that must have made you feel the won­der­ful charm of the man, his sin­gu­lar pow­er. You have seen how he looks,” laugh­ing at some rec­ol­lec­tion. “Some­times when he has talked to me, look­ing me straight in the face with his clear, soft, gen­tle, blue eyes, I have doubt­ed ev­ery­thing that I ev­er had heard against him. Things that I know to a moral cer­tain­ty to be true seemed a mon­strous slan­der. You must have felt some­thing of this, though you have seen him but once; and the more fre­quent­ly you meet him the more you will feel it. The pow­er of the man is past words and past un­der­stand­ing. Did you know that he once held a high of­fice un­der Spain? Oh, yes, for years he con­trolled the ar­ro­gant, treach­er­ous, lo­cal gov­ern­ment of Spain as ab­so­lute­ly as he con­trols the sim­ple fam­ily of Cedar House. He was liv­ing in Natchez then, and was ap­par­ent­ly a very de­vout Catholic, too, about this time. But the church which he at­tend­ed was mys­te­ri­ous­ly robbed; its al­tar was stripped of ev­ery­thing pre­cious,--gold, jew­els, paint­ings,--when none but him­self had had ac­cess to the church un­ob­served. That is the sto­ry. I do not vouch for its truth. There was no ev­idence against him--on­ly sus­pi­cions in this as in ev­ery­thing else. It was short­ly af­ter­ward that he sud­den­ly ap­peared in this coun­try a stanch Protes­tant; and then al­most im­me­di­ate­ly the present reign of crime be­gan. Yet he has nev­er been seen in the com­pa­ny of any known law-​break­ers. Many mys­te­ri­ous vis­itors are said to come to his house over the Wilder­ness Road, and to go as mys­te­ri­ous­ly as they come. But no one claims to know who or what they are, where they come from, or where they go. It is said that these men who car­ry out his or­ders hard­ly know him by sight, that he sees on­ly the lead­ers, and that they nev­er dare go to his house un­less they are sent for. It is be­lieved that he rarely goes in­to de­tail, and does not wish to know what they do in car­ry­ing out his wish­es. It is said that he is sick­ened by the slight­est men­tion of blood­shed or cru­el­ty, like any del­icate, sen­si­tive wom­an, but is per­fect­ly in­dif­fer­ent to all sorts of atroc­ity that go on out of his sight and knowl­edge. There is, in­deed, a gen­er­al opin­ion that he ac­tu­al­ly does not know half of the time what his tools are guilty of; that he pur­pose­ly avoids know­ing. I have heard it said that the bold­est of the band would no more ven­ture to tell him of the crimes they com­mit while ex­ecut­ing or­ders, than he would put his head in a li­on's mouth. It is un­der­stood that Al­ston sim­ply points to a thing when he wants it done, leav­ing all shock­ing de­tails to his tools. But this is mere hearsay. No one re­al­ly knows any­thing about him; that is to say, no one out­side his band--if he ac­tu­al­ly has one. It is very gen­er­al­ly be­lieved, how­ev­er, that he has on­ly to blow a sin­gle blast on a horn at any hour of the day or night, and that from fifty to a hun­dred armed men will in­stant­ly ap­pear, as if they had sprung out of the earth. It is al­so gen­er­al­ly be­lieved that he makes all the fine coun­ter­feit mon­ey with which this coun­try is flood­ed, and that he does the work with his own del­icate, white hands. Yet not a dol­lar has ev­er been traced to him, al­though its reg­ular sale goes steadi­ly on at a fixed rate of six­teen bad dol­lars for one good dol­lar. It is gen­er­al­ly be­lieved, too, that he keeps his mon­ey, both the good and the bad, buried some­where in the for­est near his house, pre­sum­ably for the dou­ble pur­pose of guard­ing against rob­bery by his tools and against sur­prise by the of­fi­cers of the law. This, of course, is al­so mere spec­ula­tion; no­body re­al­ly knows any­thing about what he does. I on­ly know that his house is a bare log hut, which is sin­gu­lar enough, see­ing what a fine gen­tle­man he is, and what lux­ury he has sur­round­ed the girl with. But I know that to be true, be­cause ac­ci­dent once took me to his house, and greater cour­tesy I nev­er found any­where, though I was not in­vit­ed to come again. It is known that he owns a fleet of flat­boats, and one of them is usu­al­ly seen wait­ing near Duff's Fort when hors­es are stolen, and it is al­ways gone be­fore the dawn of the next day; but there is no proof of this, ei­ther. Boats be­long­ing to oth­er peo­ple have a hard time get­ting past Duff's Fort. More of­ten than not, they are nev­er seen or heard of af­ter reach­ing that fa­tal point, and the pas­sen­gers van­ish off the face of the earth. That is what hap­pened to Ruth's par­ents, as near­ly as any one but Al­ston knows. Most like­ly he knows noth­ing more.”

“And know­ing this, she loves him, and the judge and his nephew trust him?”

“The child doesn't know any­thing about it. Who would tell her? He is like her fa­ther--he could not have been more ten­der of her had she been his own child. There is noth­ing strange in her lov­ing him; it would be far more strange if she did not. She is a gen­tle, lov­ing na­ture, and he has done ev­ery­thing to win her love, and you know what he is.”

“How can any crea­ture in hu­man form be so ut­ter­ly un­nat­ural--so whol­ly a mon­ster? How can he en­dure to see her, much less pro­fess fond­ness for her, know­ing what he has done?”

“I have thought a good deal about that, and I have nev­er been able to make up my mind. You see we don't know that he has done any­thing wrong. Yet it may be an un­con­scious ex­pi­ation. Who knows? The hu­man heart is a mys­te­ri­ous thing. But it is most like­ly that he sim­ply be­gan to love her when she was a ba­by, just be­cause she was so love­ly that he couldn't help it. She won all hearts in her cra­dle--the lit­tle witch. I re­mem­ber very well how she used to keep me from my work, by curl­ing her rose leaf of a hand around one of my rough fin­gers, be­fore she could talk.”

“But why--lov­ing her--should he wish to mar­ry her against her will?”

“We do not know that it is against her will. That is to say, I know noth­ing of the kind, and I have no rea­son even to think it.”

There was a si­lence af­ter this. Paul Col­bert was sud­den­ly re­al­iz­ing that he al­so had no rea­son to think her un­will­ing; but this did not com­fort him or change his feel­ing. It is the de­light and mis­ery of love nev­er to have any­thing to do with rea­son.

“It is not like­ly that Al­ston would ap­prove any­thing that he did not be­lieve was for her hap­pi­ness,” Fa­ther Orin went on af­ter a brief si­lence. “But there may have been oth­er in­duce­ments. With the judge's nephew un­der his thumb, he need not have much fear of the law or the court. That was the rea­son most gen­er­al­ly as­signed for his pa­tron­age of William Press­ley in the first place, be­fore there was any en­gage­ment be­tween the young man and Ruth. But that will, as a mat­ter of course, bind him clos­er to Al­ston's in­ter­ests, through her fond­ness for him. And on yes­ter­day I heard of a scheme to put Press­ley in Joe Daviess' place. It has been kept qui­et, but is said to be well on foot, and I should not be sur­prised if it were true. Press­ley is po­lit­ical­ly am­bi­tious above any­thing, so that there are sev­er­al rea­sons why he and Al­ston should hold to­geth­er. In the event of Press­ley's se­cur­ing the ap­point­ment, there would not be much dan­ger of the law's in­ter­fer­ence with any un­law­ful plans that Al­ston might have. Mind you, I don't say that he has any. I don't know that he has, and I am not even sure that I am right in telling you these things, which are mere­ly ru­mor, af­ter all. Well, at all events he has his good points. He is very gen­er­ous, and al­ways ready, open-​hand­ed, to help any good work of the Sis­ters. I have had scru­ples about let­ting them ac­cept his gifts, but I have hes­itat­ed to speak for they know noth­ing against him, and there is al­ways dan­ger of do­ing in­jus­tice. We have no right to ac­cuse any­one of any­thing that we can­not prove.”

Paul was not lis­ten­ing to his friend's scru­ples. He had risen from his chair, and was walk­ing up and down the room. Present­ly he paused and faced the priest with the air of a man who sees his way and has made up his mind. His voice rang clear with de­ci­sion.

“Then this is the net that has been wo­ven about her--the in­no­cent, help­less lit­tle thing! She is to be made a vic­tim through her ten­der­est and most nat­ural af­fec­tions. It's like seething a kid in its moth­er's milk. And how ut­ter­ly un­pro­tect­ed she is! Think of her fa­ther! Look at the judge--for all his kind­ness! What is there to ex­pect from him? And Philip Al­ston, who pre­tends to love her? He is us­ing her af­fec­tion for him­self to bring about this mar­riage, so that she may bind this dull tool--this pompous fool, Press­ley--to the ser­vice of an or­ga­nized band of rob­bers and as­sas­sins.”

“You are rush­ing to con­clu­sions, my son. There is no rea­son, is there, to think that she doesn't love the young man? We haven't the slight­est right to as­sume that. I cer­tain­ly have not--have you?”

Fa­ther Orin spoke with a keen look at the pale, ag­itat­ed young face, which flushed painful­ly. See­ing this the priest went on more gen­tly with­out wait­ing for any re­ply.

“And I must again re­mind you that we do not know that Philip Al­ston has any­thing to do with the law­less­ness of the coun­try,--we mere­ly sus­pect him. Sus­pi­cion and ev­idence are dif­fer­ent things; so wide­ly dif­fer­ent, in­deed, that I may have done grave wrong in even men­tion­ing the first to you.”

“Then we must try to find out the truth--try to lay our hand on the ev­idence which will prove Al­ston's in­no­cence or his guilt. Do­ing that can­not harm her--if she is hap­py in this en­gage­ment,” with a strong ef­fort, “and it may help her--if she is not.”

The priest shook his head. “You for­get that many able men have al­ready tried hard to do what you sug­gest, and that ev­ery at­tempt has failed.”

“That hasn't a straw's weight with me. I shall not fail, be­cause I am go­ing to try hard­er than any one else ev­er can have tried,” with the con­fi­dence and courage that be­long to love. “I think I can do some­thing to aid the of­fi­cers in gath­er­ing ev­idence. My work, car­ry­ing me over the whole re­gion where these vil­lains do theirs, gives me op­por­tu­ni­ties to know what is go­ing on. I shall speak to the at­tor­ney-​gen­er­al ear­ly to-​mor­row morn­ing. Ev­ery hon­est man owes it to the state to give such help as he can in this ex­trem­ity.”

“Take care,” said Fa­ther Orin, gen­tly. “I am doubt­ing more and more the wis­dom and right of hav­ing told you these sto­ries about Philip Al­ston. Re­mem­ber, they are mere­ly ru­mors, widespread and gen­er­al­ly be­lieved, it is true, yet still whol­ly un­sup­port­ed by ev­idence. We must be care­ful. There is a bare pos­si­bil­ity that we may be wrong, that we may be do­ing a ter­ri­ble in­jus­tice to an in­no­cent man. I do not be­lieve that any­thing can be long be­lieved by a great many hon­est peo­ple un­less there is some truth un­der­neath for it to rest up­on; and this about Philip Al­ston has been be­lieved by the best men of this coun­try for a good many years. But the fact that it hasn't been proven re­mains, nev­er­the­less. There has nev­er been a shad­ow of re­al ev­idence, and we, as fair-​mind­ed men, are bound to re­mem­ber that.” He hes­itat­ed for a mo­ment, and looked at the young doc­tor as if un­cer­tain whether to say some­thing else that was in his kind, wise thoughts. “There is an­oth­er thing that you would do well to bear in mind, my son. Any one bring­ing any charges, sup­port­ed or un­sup­port­ed, against Philip Al­ston, will break that lit­tle girl's heart. She would nev­er cred­it the strongest proof. A wom­an like that,--a ten­der, soft, cling­ing, un­rea­son­ing lit­tle thing,--who is all af­fec­tion and trust, could not be reached by tes­ti­mo­ny that would con­vince any ju­ry. That is one of the mer­ci­ful dis­pen­sa­tions; that is one of the rea­sons why men get so much more mer­cy here be­low than they de­serve. This gen­tle girl not on­ly would nev­er be­lieve, but she would nev­er, nev­er for­give you for breath­ing a word against Philip Al­ston. That is the way with wom­en of her kind. And you would not wish to hurt her, even though--”

“No! No--no!”

“And then you must not for­get that the young man whom she is to mar­ry is al­so more or less in­volved. And you must re­mem­ber that he is es­sen­tial­ly an up­right, well-​mean­ing, well-​trained young fel­low. There is no rea­son to think she doesn't love him. His con­ceit is the on­ly thing against him, and she may not mind that. A gen­tle, yield­ing na­ture like hers is of­ten at­tract­ed by a dom­inant, over­bear­ing one like his. I have of­ten no­ticed it. Maybe it is in­tend­ed by na­ture and prov­idence to keep the bal­ance of things. What would be­come of the world if all the strong ones or all the good ones were to come to­geth­er, and leave all the weak ones or all the bad ones by them­selves? You can see at once that that would nev­er do--ev­ery­thing would be at once un­bal­anced. It's hard on the good and the strong; but then, many of na­ture's pro­vi­sions are hard on the in­di­vid­ual, and yet they all work for the wel­fare of cre­ation.”

He said this with a smile and a chuck­le, hop­ing to win his friend to the half-​earnest, half-​jest­ing talk with which they some­times tried to light­en the heavy bur­dens that both were con­stant­ly bear­ing. But he saw that Paul could not re­spond, and he went back at once to the grave sym­pa­thy with which he had been speak­ing.

“At all events, this young cou­ple have cho­sen one an­oth­er for bet­ter or worse, and we, as hon­est men, and Chris­tians, can­not al­low our­selves to dis­cuss, or even think of any­thing else. I wish I could help you, my son, but I can on­ly beg you to hold to your own road in life, to press straight on up­ward as steadi­ly and as brave­ly as you can. And you must put all thought of Philip Al­ston, too, out of your mind. You and I must work for the sav­ing of men's bod­ies and souls--we have noth­ing to do with their pun­ish­ment. Work, my son! Work, work for oth­ers, that is the se­cret of hap­pi­ness! And if we work hard enough for the help and the heal­ing of oth­ers, it may be that af­ter a while we will be al­lowed to find help and heal­ing for our­selves.”

And the young man look­ing sad­ly in the face of the old man promised that he would try--that he would do his best.