CHAPTER XXIV

IN THE CELLAR

After months of waiting Ann Rutledge received a letter from John McNeil. It was a straightforward explanation of the delay, mentioning sickness along the way, and other obstacles.

Ann Rutledge was delighted. In some way it seemed to lift a burden and answer a question.

Nance Cameron had the pleasure of starting the news of the letter, and its satisfactory contents, which allayed gossip, and for a time Ann was quite herself again. But no more letters came, and Ann was soon again cast down by the strangeness of her lover's silence. Once when she had hurried to the post-office after the weekly mail had arrived only to be told by the postmaster there was no letter, she made an appeal to him which touched his heart.

"He ought to write to me," she half sobbed. "Everybody is wondering about it. I don't want people to know he never writes. Don't tell it."

The postmaster promised, but Ann's troubled face haunted him, and he found himself getting thoroughly indignant with McNeil, even though glad beyond expression that he was treating her just as he was.

As the days and weeks went by Ann found the burden of the secret weighing heavily on her conscience, and the thought kept intruding itself that since he had deceived her in one way he might have done so in other ways. It was hard to think this, and yet it was almost as easy to believe as that his name was not McNeil and that he had been gone months without writing. She felt that she had done very wrong to promise to keep a secret, and such a grave and important secret, from her parents. Yet she had promised, and, torn between the feeling that she must confide in her parents and that she must keep her promise, she grew pale and quiet and unlike the laughing, singing Ann of a few months previous. Her parents noticed this with concern, and it hurt the heart of Abe Lincoln, yet none of them surmised the real trouble.

One day after Ann had been her unreal self for several months, Lincoln came home for supper early and went into the kitchen to help Mrs. Rutledge.

"I want a pan of potatoes," she said. "They're in the short bin near the door. I sent Ann for them half an hour ago, but she must have gone somewhere else."

"Mrs. Rutledge," said Abe Lincoln as he tucked the pan under his arm, "what ails Ann?"

"I'm sure I don't know. Her father and I have wondered. It's something about John McNeil I think. I suppose she's heard the talk. I can't understand John McNeil. He's too fine a young fellow to do anything mean I'm sure. I hope John Rutledge don't turn against him. He's slow to rile up, but the fur flies when he does get mad. Run on now after the taters."

Abe Lincoln made his way down the cellar-steps softly. The door was not closed. As he entered he thought he saw some object move in one of the dark corners. Opening the door a little more he looked into the dark. When his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom he saw the outlines of a human figure huddled together, and putting down his pan, with shoulders and head bent, he walked over the hard, earthen floor to the dark corner.

Here he found Ann Rutledge sitting on the edge of a turnip-box with her head leaning against the log and earthen wall.

"Ann--Ann Rutledge," he said softly. A sob was his only answer.

"Ann--Ann," he said, bending over her.

"Go away, please," she said.

"No, I will not go away. You are in trouble. I want to help you."

"You cannot--nobody can help me," and again her voice was choked with sobs.

"Of course somebody can help you. Tell me about it. Perhaps I can help you."

"But I cannot tell--my trouble--is--is--a secret."

"A secret," Lincoln said--"a secret--who from?"

"From everybody in the world but John McNeil. I promised him I would not tell--not even my mother."

"He got you to swear to a secret you could not confide in your mother?" and Lincoln seemed aghast.

"Yes--and I never had a secret from Father and Mother before."

"Ann--Ann Rutledge!" and Lincoln's voice was no longer gentle; "a secret from a girl's mother is never the right kind of a secret. A mother is the one person on earth no honorable man would want secrets kept from. It is wrong Ann--wrong."

"I believe it is. It is wearing me out--it is breaking my heart--I feel that I cannot keep it--and yet I promised."

"Ann Rutledge!" Lincoln was bending over her and there was a tone in his voice that compelled her to look up. In the gloom his face had taken on a strange, white cast and something of the expression it had borne when Jack Armstrong had tried the unfair trick.

"Ann Rutledge," he whispered under his breath, "has John McNeil in any way wronged you? If he has--if he has--I--will choke the life out of him, and that without warnin'."

"Oh, Abraham!" she cried, "don't talk so. I don't know whether he has wronged me or not. That's what the secret's about--I don't know and I wish I could die right here in this cellar," and again she turned her face to the wall and sobbed.

Speechless, Abraham Lincoln looked down upon her. His face was pale, his teeth set--his great fists were clenched, yet what could he do?

The sobs of the girl beat against his heart, strongly fanning the pain and fierce passion.

"What shall I do--what shall I do?" she said brokenly.

"You shall go straight to your mother," he said firmly. "Tell her everything."

"But I promised--gave an honorable promise, a solemn promise that I would not tell."

"There can be no such thing as an honorable promise to the kind of a man who does not know the meanin' of the word. There can be no such thing as a sacred promise to a man who has no more conception of sacredness than a beast. The man who has brought you to this trouble, of whatever kind it may be, is unfit for consideration. Go to your mother. If you don't go _I'll carry you there in my arms_."

A moment she hesitated. Then she arose. He twined his fingers around her arm and without speaking they crossed the cellar. At the door she paused. "Come on, Ann," he said, and they went up the steps together.

Entering the kitchen, Abe Lincoln said, "I found your little girl in the cellar--in trouble. She has come to tell her mother about it. I'll go fetch the potatoes."