A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories

Perhaps his recent life alone in the sweet, wholesome woods had soothed a bitter and rebellious heart. There is a balm for deepest wounds in the wind, and in the stillness of a wilderness there is salve for souls.

As he sat there brooding, or dreaming of the work he might yet do, there stole into his senses that impalpable consciousness of another presence, near, and coming nearer. Alert, silent, he rose, and as he turned he heard the front gate click. In an instant he had extinguished lamp and candle, and, stepping back into the hallway, he laid his ear to the door.

In the silence he heard steps along the gravel, then on the porch. There was a pause; leaning closer to the door he could hear the rapid, irregular breathing of his visitor. Knocking began at last, a very gentle rapping; silence, another uncertain rap, then the sound of retreating steps from the gravel, and the click of the gate-latch. With one hand covering the weapon in his coat-pocket, he opened the door without a sound and stepped out.

A young girl stood just outside his gate.

“Who are you and what is your business with this house?” he inquired, grimly. The criminal in him was now in the ascendant; he was alert, cool, suspicious, and insolent. He saw in anybody who approached his house the menace of discovery, perhaps an intentional and cunning attempt to entrap and destroy him. All that was evil in him came to the surface; the fear that anybody might forcibly frustrate his revenge – if he chose to revenge himself – raised a demon in him that blanched his naturally pallid face and started his lip muscles into that curious recession which, in animals, is the first symptom of the snarl.

“What do you want?” he repeated. “Why do you knock and then slink away?”

“I did not know you were at home,” said the girl, faintly.

“Then why do you come knocking? Who are you, anyway?” he demanded, harshly, knowing perfectly well who she was.

“I am the postmistress at Nauvoo,” she faltered – “that is, I was – ”

“Really,” he said, angrily; “your intelligence might teach you to go where you are more welcome.”

His brutality seemed to paralyze the girl. She looked at him as though attempting to comprehend his meaning. “Are you not Mr. Helm?” she asked, in a sweet, bewildered voice.

“Yes, I am,” he replied, shortly.

“I thought you were a gentleman,” she continued, in the same stunned voice.

“I’m not,” said Helm, bitterly. “I fancy you will agree with me, too. Good-night.”

He deliberately turned his back on her and sat down on the wooden steps of the porch; but his finely modelled ears were alert and listening, and when to his amazement he heard her open his gate again and re-enter, he swung around with eyes contracting wickedly.

She met his evil glance quite bravely, wincing when he invited her to leave the yard. But she came nearer, crossing the rank, soaking grass, and stood beside him where he was sitting.

“May I tell you something?” she asked, timidly.

“Will you be good enough to pass your way?” he answered, rising.

“Not yet,” she replied, and seated herself on the steps. The next moment she was crying, silently, but that only lasted until she could touch her eyes with her handkerchief.

He stood above her on the steps. Perhaps it was astonishment that sealed his lips, perhaps decency. He had noticed that she was slightly lame, although her slender figure appeared almost faultless. He waited for a moment.

Far on the clearing’s dusky edge a white-throated sparrow called persistently to a mate that did not answer.

If Helm felt alarm or feared treachery his voice did not betray it. “What is the trouble?” he demanded, less roughly.

She said, without looking at him: “I have deceived you. There was a letter for you to-day. It came apart and – I found – this – ”

She held out a bit of paper. He took it mechanically. His face had suddenly turned gray.

The paper was fibre paper. He stood there breathless, his face a ghastly, bloodless mask; and when he found his voice it was only the ghost of a voice.

“What is all this about?” he asked.

“About fibre paper,” she answered, looking up at him.

“Fibre paper!” he repeated, confounded by her candor.

“Yes – government fibre. Do you think I don’t know what it is?”

For the first time there was bitterness in her voice. She turned partly around, supporting her body on one arm. “Fibre paper? Ah, yes – I know what it is,” she said again.

He looked her squarely in the eyes and he saw in her face that she knew what he was and what he had been doing in Nauvoo. The blood slowly stained his pallid cheeks.

“Well,” he said, coolly, “what are you going to do about it?”

His eyes began to grow narrow and the lines about his mouth deepened. The criminal in him, brought to bay, watched every movement of the young girl before him. Tranquil and optimistic, he quietly seated himself on the wooden steps beside her. Little he cared for her and her discovery. It would take more than a pretty, lame girl to turn him from his destiny; and his destiny was what he chose to make it. He almost smiled at her.

“So,” he said, in smooth, even tones, “you think the game is up?”

“Yes; but nothing need harm you,” she answered, eagerly.

“Harm me!” he repeated, with an ugly sneer; then a sudden, wholesome curiosity seized him, and he blurted out, “But what do you care?”

Looking up at him, she started to reply, and the words failed her. She bent her head in silence.

“Why?” he demanded again.

“I have often seen you,” she faltered; “I sometimes thought you were unhappy.”

“But why do you come to warn me? People hate me in Nauvoo.”

“I do not hate you,” she replied, faintly.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

A star suddenly gleamed low over the forest’s level crest. Night had fallen in Nauvoo. After a silence he said, in an altered voice, “Am I to understand that you came to warn a common criminal?”

She did not answer.

“Do you know what I am doing?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What?”

“You are counterfeiting.”

“How do you know,” he said, with a touch of menace in his sullen voice.