Lily Dougall - What Necessity Knows

L >> Lily Dougall >> What Necessity Knows

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34

Two men were watching her from the smoking-room of the hotel; the one an
elderly man, the owner of the house, had his attention arrested by the
calm force of character Eliza was displaying; the other, the young
American dentist, saw in the incident an excuse for interference, and he
rushed out now to the rescue, and gallantly carried the little naughty
one safely to the right side of the road.

Eliza, recognising him, saw that he was looking at her with the pleasant
air of an old acquaintance--one, in fact, who knew her so well that any
formal greeting was unnecessary--not that she knew anything about
greetings, or what might or might not be expected, but she had an
indistinct sense that he was surprisingly friendly.

"How's the stove going?" then he asked. He escorted her into the shop,
and superintended her little purchases in a good-natured, elder-brother
fashion. That done, he carried the elder child across the road again,
and Eliza went upon her way back down the long narrow pavement, with the
children at her side.

She had shown nothing to the young man but composed appreciation of his
conduct. She was, however, conscious that he would not have been so kind
to any girl he happened to meet. "He admires me," thought Eliza to
herself. For all that, she was not satisfied with the encounter. She
felt that she had not played her part well; she had been too--had been
too--she did not know what. She thought if she had held her head higher
and shown herself less thankful--yes, there had been something amiss in
her behaviour that ought to be corrected. She could not define what she
had done, or ought to have done. How could she? An encounter of this
sort was as new to her as Mrs. Rexford's sewing machine, which she had
not yet been allowed to touch. Yet had she been shut up alone with the
machine, as she was now shut up to revise her own conduct within
herself, she would, by sheer force of determined intelligence, have
mastered its intricacy to a large degree without asking aid. And so with
this strong idea that she must learn how to act differently to this
young man; dim, indeed, as was her idea of what was lacking, or what was
to be gained, she strove with it in no fear of failure.

She raised her head as she walked, and recast the interview just past in
another form more suited to her vague ideal, and again in another. She
had a sense of power within her, that sense which powerful natures have,
without in the least knowing in what direction the power may go forth,
or when they will be as powerless--as Samson shaven. She only felt the
power and its accompanying impulses; she supposed that in all ways, at
all times, it was hers to use.

In a day or two Cyril Harkness met Eliza in the street again, and took
occasion to speak to her. This time she was much less obliging in her
manner. She threw a trifle of indifference into her air, looking in
front of her instead of at him, and made as if she wished to proceed.
Had this interview terminated as easily as the other, she would have
been able to look back upon it with complete satisfaction, as having
been carried on, on her part, according to her best knowledge of
befitting dignity; but, unfortunately for her, the young American was of
an outspoken disposition, and utterly untrammelled by those instincts of
conventionality which Eliza had, not by training, but by inheritance
from her law-abiding and custom-loving Scotch ancestry.

"Say," said he, "are you mad at anything?"

He gained at least this much, that she instantly stared at him.

"If you aren't angry with me, why should you act crusty?" he urged. "You
aren't half as pleasant as t'other day."

Eliza had not prepared herself for this free speaking, and her mind was
one that moved slowly.

"I must take the children home," she said. "I'm not angry. I wasn't
pleasant that I know of."

"You ought to be pleasant, any way; for I'm your best friend."

Eliza was not witty, and she really could not think of an answer to this
astonishing assertion. Again she looked at him in simple surprise.

"Well, yes, I am; although you don't know it. There isn't man round
Turriffs who has the least idea in the world where you are, for your
friends left you asleep when they came out with the old gentleman; when
I twigged how you got off I never told a word. Your father had been
seen" (here he winked) "near Dalhousie, wandering round! But they won't
find you unless I tell them, and I won't."

"Won't find me unless you tell them," repeated Eliza slowly, the utmost
astonishment in her tone. "Who?"

So vague and great was the wonder in her voice that he brought his eyes
to interrogate hers in sudden surprise. He saw only simple and strong
interest on the face of a simple and strong country girl. He had
expected a different response and a different expression.

He put his tongue in the side of his cheek with the air of an
uncontrolled boy who has played a trump-card in vain. "Say," said he,
"didn't you, though?"

"Didn't I?" said Eliza, and after a minute she said, "What?"

The young man looked at her and smiled. His smile suggested a cunning
recognition that she was deceiving him by pretended dulness.

At this Eliza looked excessively offended, and, with her head aloft,
began to push on the little sleigh with the baby in it.

"Beg your pardon, ma'am," he said with sudden humility, but with a
certain lingering in his voice as if he could not relinquish his former
idea as suddenly as he wished to appear to do. "I see I've made a
mistake."

Eliza hesitated in her onward movement. "But what was it you were going
to tell about me?" She spoke as if she had merely then remembered how
the conversation began.

His recantation was now complete. "Nothing; oh, nothing. T'was just my
fun, miss."

She surveyed him with earnest disapprobation.

"You're not a very sensible young man, I'm afraid."

She said this severely, and then, with great dignity, she went home.

The young man lingered for a minute or two by the snow piles in front of
the hotel where they had been standing. Then he went into the hotel with
the uncertain step that betokens an undecided mind. When he got to the
window he looked out at her retreating figure--a white street with this
grey-clad healthy-looking girl walking down it, and the little red
box-sleigh with the baby in it which she pushed before her. He was quite
alone, and he gave vent to an emphatic half-whisper to himself.

"If she did it, she's a magnificent deep one--a magnificent deep one."
There was profound admiration in his voice.

That evening it was Mrs. Rexford who happened to wipe the tea-things
while Eliza washed them.

"That young Mr. Harkness, the dentist--" began Eliza.

"Yes," said Mrs. Rexford, alert.

"Twice when I've been to the shop he's tried to make himself pleasant to
me and the children. I don't suppose he means any harm, but he's not a
sensible young man, I think."

"You're a very sensible girl, Eliza," said Mrs. Rexford, with quick
vigour and without any sense of contrast.

"It doesn't matter to me," went on Eliza, "for I don't answer him more
than I can help; but if he was to talk to the other girls when they go
out, I suppose they'd know not to notice him too much."

Mrs. Rexford was one of those people who get accustomed to
circumstances in the time that it takes others to begin to wonder at
them. She often took for granted now that Eliza would consider her
daughters as, entirely on a level with herself, but less sensible. It
might not be wholly agreeable; neither, to Mrs. Rexford's mind, was it
agreeable to have the earth covered with snow for four months of the
year; but she had ceased wondering at that phenomenon a minute after she
had first read of it in a book of travels, and all the ever-fresh marvel
of its glossy brightness had, failed to bring fresh comment to her lips,
or to make her mind more familiar with the idea. In the same way, she
had accepted Eliza's position and character as a complex fact which,
like the winter, had advantages and disadvantages. Mrs. Rexford put up
with the latter, was thankful for the former, and wasted no more
thoughts on the matter.

Eliza's last remark, however, was a subject for consideration, and with
Mrs. Rexford consideration was speech.

"Dear me!" she said. "Well!" Then she took a few paces backward,
dish-cloth and dish still in hand, till she brought herself opposite the
next room door. The long kitchen was rather dark, as the plates were
being washed by the light of one candle, but in the next room Captain
Rexford and his family were gathered round a table upon which stood
lamps giving plenty of light.

The mother addressed the family in general. "The dentist," said she,
"talks to Eliza when she goes to the shop. Blue and Red! if he should
speak to you, you must show the same sense Eliza did, and take not the
slightest notice."

Sophia had asked what the dentist said to Eliza, and Mrs. Rexford had
reproved the girls for laughing, while the head of the family prepared
himself to answer in his kindly, leisurely, and important way.

"To 'take not the slightest notice' is, perhaps, requiring more of such
young heads than might be possible. It would be difficult even for me to
take no notice whatever of a young man who accosted me in a place like
this. Severity, mild displeasure, or a determination not to speak,
might be shown."

"If necessary," said Sophia; "but--"

"If _necessary_," the father corrected himself, emphasizing his words
with a gentle tap of his fingers on the table. "I only mean if
necessary, of course."

"People have such easy-going ways here," said Sophia. "Don't you think,
mamma, a little ordinary discretion on the girls' part would be enough?
Blue and Red have too much sense, I suppose, to treat him as an equal;
but they can be polite."

Eliza, overhearing this, decided that she would never treat the young
American as an equal, although she had no idea why she should not.

Let it not be supposed that Mrs. Rexford had idled over the dish she was
wiping. The conversation was, in fact, carried on between the family in
the bright sitting-room and an intermittent appearance of Mrs. Rexford
at the door of the shady kitchen. Twice she had disappeared towards
Eliza's table to get a fresh plate and come again, rubbing it.

"Ah, girls," she now cried, "Sophia is always giving you credit for more
sense than I'm afraid you possess. No giggling, now, if this young
fellow should happen to say 'good morning.' Just 'good morning' in
return, and pass on--nothing more."

The father's leisurely speech again broke in and hushed the little
babble.

"Certainly, my dear daughters, under such circumstances as your mother
suggests; to look down modestly, and answer the young man's salutation
with a little primness, and not to hesitate in your walk--that, I should
think, is perhaps the course of conduct your mother means to indicate."

"It strikes me," said Harold, the eldest son, "a good deal depends on
what he _did_ say to Eliza. Eliza!"

This last was a shout, and the girl responded to it, so that there were
now two figures at the door, Mrs. Rexford drying the dish, and Eliza
standing quite quietly and at ease.

"Yes, my son," responded Captain Rexford, "it _does_ depend a good deal
on what he _did_ say to Eliza. Now, Eliza" (this was the beginning of a
judicial inquiry), "I understand from Mrs. Rexford that----"

"I've heard all that you have said," said Eliza. "I've been just here."

"Ah! Then without any preface" (he gave a wave of his hand, as if
putting aside the preface), "I might just ask you, Eliza, what this
young--Harkness, I believe his name is--what----"

"He's just too chatty, that's all that's the matter with him," said
Eliza. "He took off his hat and talked, and he'd have been talking yet
if I hadn't come away. There was no sense in what he said, good or bad."

The children were at last allowed to go on with their lessons.

When the dish-washing was finished and Mrs. Rexford came into the
sitting-room, Sophia took the lamp by the light of which she had been
doing the family darning into the kitchen, and she and Harold
established themselves there. Harold, a quiet fellow about nineteen, was
more like his half-sister than any other member of the family, and there
was no need that either should explain to the other why they were glad
to leave the nervous briskness of the more occupied room. It was their
habit to spend their evenings here, and Sophia arranged that Eliza
should bring her own sewing and work at it under her direction. Harold
very often read aloud to them. It was astonishing how quickly, not
imperceptibly, but determinedly, the Canadian girl took on the habits
and manners of the lady beside her; not thereby producing a poor
imitation, for Eliza was not imitative, but by careful study reproducing
in herself much of Sophia's refinement.

CHAPTER XV.

That evening Blue and Red were sent to bed rather in disgrace, because
they had professed themselves too sleepy to finish sewing a seam their
mother had given them to do.

Very sleepy, very glad to fold up their work, they made their way,
through the cold empty room which was intended to be the drawing-room
when it was furnished, to one of the several bedrooms that opened off
it. There was only one object in the empty room which they passed
through, and that was the big family carriage, for which no possible use
could be found during the long winter, and for the storing of which no
outside place was considered good enough. It stood wheelless in a
corner, with a large grey cloth over it, and the girls passing it with
their one flickering candle looked at it a little askance. They had the
feeling that something might be within or behind it which would bounce
out at them.

Once, however, within their small whitewashed bedroom, they felt quite
safe. Their spirits rose a little when they shut the door, for now there
was no exacting third person to expect anything but what they chose to
give. Theirs was that complete happiness of two persons when it has been
long proved that neither ever does anything which the other does not
like, and neither ever wants from the other what is not naturally given.

They were still sleepy when they unbuttoned each other's frocks, but
when they had come to the next stage of shaking out their curly hair
they began to make remarks which tended to dispel their drowsiness.

Said Blue, "Is it very dreadful to be a dentist?"

Said Red, "Yes; horrid. You have to put your fingers in people's mouths,
you know."

"But doctors have to _cut off legs_, and doctors are quite----"

There is another advantage in perfect union of twin souls, and that is,
that it is never necessary to finish a remark the end of which does not
immediately find expression on the tip of the tongue, for the other
always knows what is going to be said.

"Yes, I know doctors are," replied Red; "still, you know, Principal
Trenholme said Mr. Harkness is not a well-bred American."

"His first name is Cyril. I saw it on the card," replied Blue, quitting
the question of social position.

"It's a _lovely_ name," said Red, earnestly.

"And I'll tell you," said Blue, turning round with sudden earnestness
and emphasis, "I think he's the _handsomest_ young man I _ever saw_."

The rather odd plan Mrs. Rexford had hit on for lessening the likeness
between these two, clothing each habitually in a distinctive colour, had
not been carried into her choice of material for their dressing-gowns.
These garments were white; and, as a stern mood of utility had guided
their mother's shears, they were short and almost shapeless. The curly
hair which was being brushed over them had stopped its growth, as curly
hair often does, at the shoulders. In the small whitewashed room the two
girls looked as much like choristers in surplices as anything might
look, and their sweet oval faces had that perfect freshness of youth
which is strangely akin to the look of holiness, in spite of the
absolute frivolity of conduct which so often characterises young
companionship.

When Blue made her earnest little assertion, she also made an earnest
little dab at the air with her brush to emphasise it; and Red, letting
her brush linger on her curly mop, replied with equal emphasis and the
same earnest, open eyes, "Oh, so do I."

This decided, there was quiet for a minute, only the soft sound of
brushing. Then Red began that pretty little twittering which bore to
their laughter when in full force the same relation that the first faint
chit, chit, chit of a bird bears to its full song.

"Weren't papa and mamma funny when they talked about what we should do
if he spoke to us?"

She did not finish her sentence before merriment made it difficult for
her to pronounce the words; and as for Blue, she was obliged to throw
herself on the side of the bed.

Then again Blue sat up.

"You're to look down as you pass him, Red--like this, look!"

"_That_ isn't right." Red said this with a little shriek of delight.
"You're smiling all over your face--that won't do."

"Because I _can't_ keep my face straight. Oh, Red, what _shall_ we do? I
know that if we _ever_ see him after this we shall simply _die_."

"Oh, yes"--with tone of full conviction--"I know we shall."

"But we _shall_ meet him."

They became almost serious for some moments at the thought of the
inevitableness of the meeting and the hopelessness of conducting
themselves with any propriety.

"And what will he think?" continued Blue, in sympathetic distress; "he
will certainly think we are laughing at _him_, for he will never imagine
how much we have been amused."

Red, however, began to brush her hair again. "Blue," said she, "did you
ever try to see how you looked in the glass when your eyes were cast
down? You can't, you know."

Blue immediately tried, and admitted the difficulty.

"I wish I could," said Red, "for then I should know how I should look
when he had spoken to me and I was passing him."

"Well, do it, and I'll tell you."

"Then you stand there, and I'll come along past and look down just when
I meet you."

Red made the experiment rather seriously, but Blue cried out:

"Oh, you looked at me out of the corner of your eye, just as you were
looking down--that'll never do."

"I didn't mean to. Now look! I'm doing it again." The one white-gowned
figure stood with its back to the bed while the other through its little
acting down the middle of the room.

"That's better"--critically.

"Well," pursued Red, with interest, "how does it look?"

"Rather nice. I shouldn't wonder if he fell in love with you."

This was a sudden and extraordinary audacity of thought.

"Oh, Blue!"--in shocked tones--"How could you think of such a thing!" She
reproached her sister as herself. It was actually the first time such a
theme had been broached even in their private converse.

"Well," said Blue, stoutly, "he might, you know. Such things happen."

"I don't think it's quite nice to think of it," said Red, meditatively.

"It isn't nice," said Blue, agreeing perfectly, but unwilling to recant;
"still, it may be our duty to think of it. Sophia said once that a woman
was always more or less responsible if a man fell in love with her."

"Did Sophia say that?" Weighty worlds of responsibility seemed to be
settling on little Red's shoulders.

"Yes; she was talking to mamma about something. So, as it's quite
possible he might fall in love with us, we _ought_ to consider the
matter."

"You don't think he's falling in love with Eliza, do you?"

"Oh no!"--promptly--"but then Eliza isn't like us."

Red looked at her pretty face in the glass as she continued to smooth
out the brown curls. She thought of Eliza's tall figure, immobile white
face, and crown of red hair.

"No," she said, meditatively; "but, Blue"--this quite seriously--"I hope
he won't fall in love with us."

"Oh, so do I; for it would make him feel so miserable. But I think,
Red, when you looked down you did not look _prim_ enough--you know papa
said 'prim.' Now, you stand, and I'll do it."

So Blue now passed down the little narrow room, but when she came to the
critical spot, the supposed meeting ground, her desire to laugh
conflicting with the effort to pull a long face, caused such a wry
contortion of her plump visage that seriousness deserted them once more,
and they bubbled over in mirth that would have been boisterous had it
not been prudently muffled in the pillows.

After that they said their prayers. But when they had taken off the
clumsy dressing-gowns and got into the feather-bed under the big
patchwork quilt, like two little white rabbits nestling into one
another, they reverted once more to their father's instructions for
meeting the dentist, and giggled themselves to sleep.

Another pair of talkers, also with some common attributes of character,
but with less knowledge of each other, were astir after these sisters
had fallen asleep.

Most of the rooms in the house were on the ground-floor, but there were
two attic bedrooms opening off a very large room in the roof which the
former occupant had used as a granary. One of these Sophia occupied with
a child; the other had been given to Eliza. That night, when Sophia was
composing herself to sleep, she heard Eliza weeping. So smothered were
the sounds of sorrow that she could hardly hear them. She lifted her
head, listened, then, putting a long fur cloak about her, went into the
next room.

No sooner was her hand on the latch of Eliza's door than all sound
ceased. She stood for a minute in the large, dark granary. The draught
in it was almost great enough to be called a breeze, and it whispered in
the eaves which the sloping rafters made round the edges of the floor as
a wind might sigh in some rocky cave. Sophia opened the door and went
in.

"What is the matter, Eliza?"

Even in the almost darkness she could see that the girl's movement Was
an involuntary feigning of surprise.

"Nothing."

"I used to hear you crying when we first came, Eliza, and now you have
begun it again. Tell me what troubles you. Why do you pretend that
nothing is the matter?"

The cold glimmer of the light of night reflected on snow came in at the
diamond-shaped window, and the little white bed was just shadowed forth
to Sophia's sight. The girl in it might have been asleep, she remained
so quiet.

"Are you thinking about your father?"

"I don't know."

"Do you dislike being here?"

"No; but--"

"But what? What is troubling you, Eliza? You're not a girl to cry for
nothing. Since you came to us I have seen that you are a
straightforward, good girl; and you have plenty of sense, too. Come,
tell me how it is you cry like this?"

Eliza sat up. "You won't tell them downstairs?" she said slowly.

"You may trust me not to repeat anything that is not necessary."

Eliza moved nervously, and her movements suggested hopelessness of
trouble and difficulty of speech. Sophia pitied her.

"I don't know," she said restlessly, stretching out aimless hands into
the darkness, "I don't know why I cry, Miss Sophia. It isn't for one
thing more than another; everything is the reason--everything,
everything."

"You mean, for one thing, that your father has gone, and you are
homesick?"

"You said you wouldn't _tell?_"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm not sorry about _that_, because--well, I suppose I liked
father as well as he liked me, but as long as he lived I'd have had to
stay on the clearin', and I hated that. I'm glad to be here; but, oh! I
want so much--I want so much--oh, Miss Sophia, don't you know?"

In some mysterious way Sophia felt that she did know, although she could
not in any way formulate her confused feeling of kinship with this young
girl, so far removed from her in outward experience. It seemed to her
that she had at some time known such trouble as this, which was composed
of wanting "so much--so much," and hands that were stretched, not
towards any living thing, but vaguely to all possible possession outside
the longing self.

"I want to be something," said Eliza, "rich or--I don't know--I would
like to drive about in a fine way like some ladies do, or wear grander
clothes than any one. Yes, I would like to keep a shop, or do something
to make me very rich, and make everybody wish they were like me."

Sophia smiled to herself, but the darkness was about them. Then Sophia
sighed. Crude as were the notions that went to make up the ignorant idea
of what was desirable, the desire for it was without measure. There was
a silence, and when Eliza spoke again Sophia did not doubt but that she
told her whole mind.

It is a curious thing, this, that when a human being of average
experience is confided in, the natural impulse is to assume that
confidence is complete, and the adviser feels as competent to pronounce
upon the case from the statement given as if minds were as limpid as
crystal, and words as fit to represent them as a mirror is to show the
objects it reflects. Yet if the listener would but look within, he would
know that in any complicated question of life there would be much that
he would not, more than he could not, tell of himself, unless long years
of closest companionship had revealed the one heart to the other in ways
that are beyond the power of words. And that is so even if the whole
heart is set to be honest above all--and how many hearts are so set?

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34