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Mystery of the Locks

<h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2> <h3>THE PURSUING SHADOW.</h3> Allan Dorris and his wife had been up in the hills watching the sunset, and at dusk were returning leisurely home. They were very fond of the unfrequented locality where he had first declared his passion, and when the weather was fine they frequently visited it to imagine themselves lovers again, which was easy enough, for as man and wife they got along amazingly well. And now, when they were returning at nightfall, a shadow crept after them; from bush to rock, and from tree to shrub, crawling and stealing along like a beast watching its prey. Pretty Annie Dorris, prettier than ever before, was expressing a fear in her winning way that their happiness was too great to last, and that something dreadful would happen to them. But she had no suspicion of the lurking, creeping shadow which had hurried forward, and now stood almost within arm's length, as her husband replied,— "I have been so discontented all my life, and am so contented now, that I believe the Fates will guard me from it in pity. It is not much that I ask; a country girl to be my wife, and love me—nothing more. And it will always be my endeavor to be so useful to the country girl that she will be happy, too, so that the simple boon of peace is not too much to ask when it will make two people entirely happy. I cheerfully give up my place in the strife for greatness and riches in which men seem to be always engaged, and will be content with the good health and plenty which my simple life here will bring me. As for a living, I can make that easy enough; I am making more even now than we can possibly spend. I hope your fears are not substantial." The country girl had her arm through her husband's, and she looked up into his face with such a troubled expression that he stopped in the road. "It may be that I am fearful only because I love you so much," she said. "It almost kills me when I think that any harm might happen to you." "I am glad to hear you say that," he replied, "but you are always saying something which pleases me. You look handsome to-night; you look prettier now than before you were married, and I think more of you. You don't fade out, and I love you for that; you are as fresh and as girlish as you ever were before we were married. I think it an evidence of good blood." "Now you are pleasing me," his wife said laughingly. "I have feared very often that you would not like me so well when you knew me better, and that you would finally tire of me." "But I don't," Dorris replied. "The more I know of you the better I like you. It's not usual, but I am more in love after marriage than I was before." "I have mingled so little with women," the wife said seriously, "that I sometimes fear that I am not like others of my sex in manners and dress and inclination. Did you ever notice it?" "I think I have," he said. She turned upon him with mock fierceness, and pretended to be very indignant. "Because you are not like other women, who act by rule, and are nearly all alike, is the reason I have no greater ambition than to be tied to your apron-strings," he said. "I think your freshness and originality are your greatest charms." "Long before I ever thought of becoming a wife myself," she said, seriously again, "I noticed that most men seemed to lack a knowledge of women; that they regarded them as angels while they were girls, and were disappointed because they turned out to be women as wives. I am not unjust, but I have thought the women were partly responsible for this, since many of them exhibit themselves like dolls, and pretend to be more than they are. This is the reason why I am pleased that you are not disappointed in me." "As to your being an angel," he laughingly replied, "I know you are not one, and I am glad of it. I have an idea that an angel would soon tire of me, and fly away in disgust, to warn its companions that men were not worth saving. There are some women so amiable that no matter to what extent their affairs go wrong, they cannot muster up enough energetic regret to cause them to supply a remedy. I am not so fond of amiability as to desire it at that price. Whenever you find capacity you will find temper, and I imagine that it would be dangerous to stir you up, for you are as capable a woman as ever I knew. Haven't you temper?" "Plenty of it; too much," she answered. They both laughed at this frank confession, and Dorris took occasion to say that there was not a spark of it in his nature, though there was temper written in every line of his countenance, and that he would have been an ugly man when once fully aroused was certain. They walked on again, and the shadow followed, as if anxious to hear what they were saying. "I can't account for it myself," Dorris continued, "but I enjoy your company as much now as I did before we were married. It does me as much good to talk love to you; I suppose it must be because you deserve it. The fact that you are as careful to look well as you ever did may have something to do with it, but it is certainly the case. I have heard men abused a great deal for neglecting their wives after marriage, but it never occurs to me to neglect you. I don't want to neglect you; I think too much of you. If I should fail to be as considerate of you as you are of me, I know that I would no longer receive the full measure of your confidence and love, which is such a comfort to me, therefore it is my first ambition to be just and honest with you in everything. The ambition affords me a great deal of pleasure, too, for I am never so well satisfied as when in your company. With you by my side, there is nothing else that I crave in this world or the next." "O Allan! Nothing in the next?" They had seated themselves on a rough seat in a sort of park on the hillside, and Dorris considered the matter. "Well, if you go to heaven, I want to go. Of course you will go, for you are good enough, therefore I intend to do the best I can, so that, when we come to be judged, the Master will realize how much we love each other, and conclude not to separate us. But I depend on you; He will let me in to please you—not because I deserve it." "I know you do not think as I do about it," she answered, "but it is possible that you have not investigated as I have. I am not a foolish girl, but a serious woman, and have studied and thought a great deal, and I am certain there is something more than this life. I have never mentioned the subject to you before, because I know that a great many come to dislike religion because they hear so much of it from persons no better than themselves, but everything teaches us that we shall live again, and it worries me a great deal because you think lightly about a matter which seems so dreadfully serious. My mother's faith convinces me of it, though I cannot tell you why. I am not prepared, as she was, by a long life of purity to receive the evidence; but promise me that you will think about it, and not combat your own judgment." "I have never thought about it much, and investigated but little," he answered. "It has always been natural for me to think of the grave as the end of everything, so far as I am concerned. But I have confidence in your intelligence and judgment; if you have investigated, and believe, that is enough for me; I believe. Please do not worry about it any more; I will try very hard to remain with you." He said it lightly, yet there was enough seriousness in his manner to convince her that his love for her was honest, even if his religion was not. "Religion is not natural with me: I feel no necessity for it or lack of it," he said again. "But I have no objection to it; on the contrary, I have always liked the idea, but I lack the necessary faith. It would be pleasant for me to believe that, in the next country, a day's journey removed, good gifts might be found; but if I could not believe it, I could not be reasonably blamed for my refusal to attempt the journey. I might even regret that the accounts were not true; but I would not insist that they were true against my honest convictions, because I hoped they were. I am religious enough in sentiment, but my brain is an inexorable skeptic. Nothing is more pleasing to me than the promise of your faith. What a blessed hope it is, that after death you will live in a land of perpetual summer; and exist forever with your friends where there is only peace and content! I am sure I can never see as much of you as I want to in this life, and I cannot tell you how much I hope we will be reunited beyond the grave, and live forever to love each other, even as we do now. I am willing to make any sacrifice necessary to ensure this future; it would be a pleasure for me to make greater sacrifices than are required, according to common rumor, for they are not at all exacting, except in the particular of faith; but that I lack, to a most alarming extent, though I cannot help it. You cannot have faith because it is your duty any more than you can love because it is your duty. I only regret that I cannot be religious as naturally as I love you, but I cannot, though I try because you want me to. I want to believe that men do not grow old and become a burden to themselves and those around them; but I know differently, and while I hope that there will be a resurrection, I know that those who have gone away on the journey which begins with death send back no messenger, and that nothing is known of heaven except the declaration of pious people that they believe in it. I love to hear the laughter of children, but it does not convince me that all the world is in a laughing mood, and that there are no tears. No one can find fault with your religion except that they cannot believe in it. Everything in nature teaches us that we will return to dust, and that we will be resurrected only as dust by the idle winds. You don't mind that I speak freely?" "No." "I have tried all my life to convince myself that I possessed the spark of immortality, but my stubborn brain resists the attempt. All my reasoning convinces me that I live for the same reason that my horse exists. I am superior to the faithful animal only in intelligence, for in physical organization I am only an animal. When an animal dies, I see its body dwindle away until there is nothing left; it becomes dust again. I hope that I may share a different fate, but I believe that I shall pass away in precisely the same manner. Understand me; I want to be religious, but I cannot be. There are some people—I suppose there are a great many, though I never knew but one personally—who ought to live forever; they are too rare to die. You are one of them, but I fear you will be lost to the world in the course of nature. You ought to be preserved for the good you can accomplish by playing the organ. I never believe in heaven so much as when I am in the back pews listening to your music. There is more religion in the old organ when you are at the keyboard than in all the people who listen to it put together; and I sometimes think that those who write the music and the songs are inspired, though when you know them, their personal characters do not encourage that impression." She put her hand to his mouth as if to stop him, but he pushed it away with a laugh, and continued,— "Let me finish, that you may know what I really am, and then I will never mention the subject again. But don't think me worse than other men for my unbelief; they nearly all think as I do, though only the bad ones say so. All good men rejoice that there is a pleasing hope in religion, and encourage it all they can, but only a few of them have your faith." "All be well yet, Allan," the wife answered. "You have promised to try and get rid of your unbelief, and I know that you will be honest in it. The Master whom I serve next to you—I fear I am becoming very wicked myself, for you are more to me than everything else—" "There it is again," Dorris said, looking at her, half laughing. "That expression wasn't studied, I know, but it pleases me greatly. You are always at it, though you have a right to now." "He is more considerate than any of us imagine, and if He knows you did not believe, He will also know that you could not, and did not intend any disrespect." "There is something in that," he answered. "I loved you before I knew you, though I did not believe you existed." "But you did find me. Is it not possible that you will find Him, though you do not believe He exists?" "That is worth thinking about. The next time I take a long ride into the country I will think it over, if I can get you out of my mind long enough. One thing, however, is certain; I want to follow you, wherever that leads me. Let me add, too, that in what I have said I intend no disrespect. It would be impudent in me, a single pebble in the sands surrounding the shores of eternity, to speak ill of a faith which is held by so many thousands of intelligent and worthy people. I speak freely to you, as my wife, my confidant, that you may know what I am." "But you are leading, Allan, and I am following," she said. "You are kind enough to believe that my future is assured, but it is not unless you are saved. You can save both of us by saving yourself. If we were at the judgment now, and you should be cast out, I would follow you. I might be of some use to you even there." "That's horrible to think about," he replied, rising to his feet; "but it pleases me. Anyway, little woman, we get along delightfully here; I hope we will always be as well off as we are now. If the next world affords me as much pleasure as this one has during the past three months, I shall be more than satisfied. It is said that a man is very happy when he is in love, and I am growing more in love with my wife every day. I suppose it is because I never was in love before. I have had extensive experience in everything else; I know a little of everything else. This may be the reason why my honeymoon lasts so long." "When I met you that afternoon, out in the hills," she answered, "you were such an expert at love-making that I was at first afraid of you. If ever man made a desperate, cunning love to a woman, you made it to me; but I soon got over my timidity, and knew you were only desperately in earnest, which made me love you until I went mad. I had nothing to give you but myself, and that I gave so readily that I sometimes fear—when you are away from me; I never think of it at any other time—that you accuse me for it." "It so happened," he answered, "that you did exactly what I wanted you to do, though I am not surprised at it now, since discovering how naturally you do a hundred things a day to please me. Accuse you?" He laughed good-naturedly at the thought. "Instead of that, it is the boast of my life that my sweetheart, my vision which came true, had so much confidence in me that she placed herself in my keeping without conditions or promises. You are the hope I have had all my life; you are the heaven I have coveted; and don't suppose that I find fault because the realization is better than the dream. When you go to heaven, and find that it is a better place than you imagined, you will not accuse the Master of a lack of propriety because he is more forgiving of your faults than you expected; nor do I. Dismiss that thought forever, to oblige me, and believe, instead, that your single fault turned out to be my greatest blessing. If I made desperate love to you up in the hills, it was natural, for I had no previous experience. I cannot remember that I ever was a young man; I was first a child, and then a man with grave responsibilities. But the fancy I told you about—the Maid of Air—I always loved it until I found you." Putting her arm through his, they walked toward the town, and the shadow emerged from a clump of bushes within a few feet of where they had been sitting. The married lovers walked on, unconscious of the presence; and occasionally the laugh of Mrs. Dorris came to the shadow on the wind, which caused it to listen anxiously, and creep on after them again. In turning out of the path that led up into the hills, and coming into the road, Dorris and his wife met Tug and Silas, who were loitering about, as usual; Tug in front, carrying the gun, and Silas lagging behind. "What now?" Dorris said good-naturedly, on coming up with them. "What are you up to to-night?" "On a Wednesday night," Tug replied, putting the stock of the gun on the ground, and turning his head to one side to get a square sight at the woman, "the woods are full of rabbits. We are out looking for them." "Why on Wednesday night?" Tug removed his gaze from Mrs. Dorris to Silas. "When do we find our game?" he inquired. "On Wednesday; at night," the little man answered meekly. "I don't know how it is, myself," Tug continued, this time taking a shot at Dorris; "but Wednesday it is. You are both looking mighty well." They thanked him for his politeness, and added that they were feeling well. "They didn't think much of you when you came," he said, pointing a finger at Dorris, which looked like a pistol, "but they have changed their minds. Even Reverend Wilton says you will do; it's the first kind word he ever said of anybody. It came out—Silas, how did it come out?" "Like a tooth," Silas answered, who had been standing by with his hands in his pockets. "Like a back tooth, you told me. Come now, didn't you say a back tooth?" Silas muttered something which was accepted as an acknowledgment, and Tug went on,— "Why didn't you say so, then? Why do you want to put it on me in the presence of the lady? But Reverend Wilton never said anything bad about you, or anybody else; he's too lazy for that. I only wonder that he didn't drop over from exhaustion when he said you'd do. Well, I should say you would do; eh, pretty girl?" Annie Dorris made no other answer than to cling closer to her husband, and Tug regarded them with apparent pleasure. "And there's Uncle Ponsonboy. Silas, what does Uncle Ponsonboy say?" "He says that Mr. Dorris is a man of promise," Davy answered. "Oh, does he? Well, he's not the kind of a man of promise, Uncle Ponsonboy is, who has been promising to distinguish himself for forty years. Old Albert reminds me of a nephew of my wife's. I supported him four years in idleness, but he was always boasting that he was able to take care of himself, and that he asked favors of nobody. He used to fill up on my bread and meat, and lounge in front of my fire, and declare that he never knew solid content until he began to make his own living, although he did nothing except to write to his folks, and say that they needn't worry about him,—he was able to take care of himself. But the old lady holds out against you." Tug swallowed a laugh with a great effort, apparently locking it up with a spring lock, for there was a click in his throat as he took aim at Dorris again and continued, but not before his scalp had returned to its place after crawling over on his forehead to look at the smile,— "I am glad of that, though. The old lady and I never agree on anything. I like the devil because she hates him. I shall be quite content in purg if she fails to like it." Allan Dorris looked puzzled for a moment. "Oh, purgatory," he said, finishing the abbreviation, and turning to his wife, who laughed at the idea, "we were talking about that just before you came up." "Neither of you need worry about that," Tug said. "You are all right. I am the devil's partner, and I know. But if you should happen down there by any mischance, I will give you the best accommodations the place affords. If there is an ice-box there, you shall have a room in it; but no ice-water for the old lady. I insist on that condition." They were very much amused at his odd talk, and promised that his instructions should be obeyed in case they became his guests. "But why are you the devil's partner?" Dorris asked. "He must have assistants, of course," Tug replied, "and I shall make application to enter his service as soon as I arrive. I want to get even with Uncle Ponsonboy." Tug locked up a laugh again with a sharp click of the lock, and his scalp hurried back to its place on learning that it was a false alarm. "I want to get a note from him to this effect: 'Dear Tug: For the sake of old acquaintance, send me a drop of water.' Whereupon I will take my iron pen in hand, and reply: 'Uncle Ponsonboy: Drink your tears.' Then I will instruct one of my devilish assistants to lock him up, and never let him see the cheerful light of the fires again. As the door closes, I will say to him, as I now say to you,—Good-night." Tug and Silas walked toward the hills, and Dorris and his wife toward the town, but the shadow no longer followed them; it had disappeared. In case the shadow came back that night to prowl around The Locks, and peer in at the windows, it found a determined-looking man on guard, carrying a wicked-looking gun. Had the eyes of the shadow followed the feet of the man, it would have noted that they walked around the stone wall at regular intervals, and that they stopped occasionally, as if listening; it would have seen them strolling leisurely away at the first approach of dawn, carrying the gun and Tug's burly body with them. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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