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Lily Dougall - What Necessity Knows

L >> Lily Dougall >> What Necessity Knows




"Is that all you have to say?"

"Isn't that enough--eight months out of a young man's life?"

"It's not enough to make me waste my time at this hour in the morning."

"Well, it's _not_ all, but it's what I'm going to say first; so you'll
have to listen to it for my good before you listen to the other for your
own. I've done all I could, Miss White, to win your affection."

He paused, looking at her, but she did not even look at him. She did
appear frightened, and, perceiving this, he took a tone more gentle and
pliant.

"I can't think why you won't keep company with me. I'm a real lovable
young man, if you'd only look at the thing fairly."

He had plenty of humour in him, but he did not seem to perceive the
humour of acting as showman to himself. He was evidently sincere.

"Why, now, one of my most lovable qualities is just that when I do
attach myself I find it awful hard to pull loose again. Now, that's just
what you don't like in me; but if you come to think of it, it's a real
nice characteristic. And then, again, I'm not cranky; I'm real amiable;
and you can't find a much nicer looking fellow than me. You'll be sorry,
you may believe, if you don't cast a more favourable eye toward me."

She did not reply, so he continued urging. "If it's because you're stuck
up, it must have been those poor English Rexfords put it into your head,
for you couldn't have had such ideas before you came here. Now, if
that's the barrier between us, I can tell you it needn't stand, for I
could have one of those two pretty young ladies of theirs quick as not.
If I said 'Come, my dear, let's go off by train and get married, and ask
your father's blessing after,' she'd come."

"How dare you tell me such a falsehood!" Eliza rose magnificently.

"Oh," said he, "I meet them occasionally."

She looked at him in utter disdain. She did not believe him; it was only
a ruse to attract her.

"How do you know," she asked fiercely, "what ideas I could have had or
not before I went to the Rexfords?"

"That's a part of what I was going to say next"--she sat down
again--"but I don't _want_ to hurt you, mind. I'd make it real easy for
you if you'd let me cherish you."

"What have you to say?"

"Just this--that it'll all have to come out some time; you know to what
I allude."

She did not look as if she knew.

"Upon my word!" he ejaculated admiringly, "you do beat all."

"Well, what are you talking of?" she asked.

"In this world or the next, all you've done will be made public, you
know," he replied, not without tone of menace. "But what I want to speak
about now is Father Cameron. I've got him here, and I've never regretted
the bread and shelter I give him, for he's a real nice old gentleman;
but I can't help him going to people's houses and putting ideas into
their heads--no more than the wind, I can't keep him. He's crazed, poor
old gentleman, that's what he is."

"You ought never to have brought him here."

"_You'd_ rather he'd been stoned in Quebec streets?" He looked at her
steadily. "It's because they all more than half believe that he got his
ideas when dead, and then came to life again, that he gets into harm. If
it wasn't for that tale against him he'd not have been hurt in Quebec,
and he'd not be believed by the folks here."

"I thought you believed that too."

He gave her a peculiar smile. "If you was to say right out now in public
that you knew he wasn't the man they take him for, but only a poor
maniac who don't know who he is himself, you'd put an end to the most
part of his influence."

"What do I know about it?" she asked scornfully; but, in haste to
divert him from an answer, she went on, "I don't see that he does any
harm, any way. You say yourself he's as good as can be."

"So he is, poor gentleman; but he's mad, and getting madder. I don't
know exactly what's brewing, but I tell you this, there's going to be
trouble of some sort before long."

"What sort?"

"Well, for one thing, drunken Job is calling out in the rum-hole that
he'll kill his wife if he finds her up to any more religious nonsense;
and she is up to something of that sort, and he's quite able to do it,
too. I heard him beating her the other night."

Eliza shuddered.

"I'm a kind-hearted fellow, Miss White," he went on, with feeling in his
voice. "I can't bear to feel that there's something hanging over the
heads of people like her--more than one of them perhaps--and that
they're being led astray when they might be walking straight on after
their daily avocations."

"But what can they be going to do?" she asked incredulously, but with
curious anxiety.

"Blest if I know! but I've heard that old man a-praying about what he
called 'the coming of the Lord,' and talking about having visions of
'the day and the month,' till I've gone a'most distracted, for otherwise
he does pray so beautiful it reminds me of my mother. He's talking of
'those poor sheep in the wilderness,' and 'leading them' to something.
He's mad, and there's a dozen of them ready to do any mad thing he
says."

"You ought to go and tell the ministers--tell the men of the town."

"Not I--nice fool I'd look! What in this world have I to accuse him of,
except what I've heard him praying about? I've done myself harm enough
by having him here."

"What do you want me to do then?"

"Whatever you like; I've told you the truth. There was a carter at
Turrifs drunk himself to death because of this unfortunate Mr. Cameron's
rising again--that's one murder; and there'll be another."

With that he turned on his heel and left her in his own room. He only
turned once to look in at the door again. "If _you're_ in any trouble,
I'm real soft-hearted, Eliza; I'll be real good to you, though you've
been crusty to me."

If she was in trouble then, she did not show it to him.




CHAPTER XVI.


Nothing contributes more frequently to indecision of character in the
larger concerns of existence than a life overcrowded with effort and
performance. Had Robert Trenholme not been living at too great a pace,
his will, naturally energetic, would not, during that spring and summer,
have halted as it did between his love for Sophia Rexford and his shame
concerning his brother's trade. With the end of June his school had
closed for the summer, but at that time the congregation at his little
church greatly increased; then, too, he had repairs in the college to
superintend, certain articles to write for a Church journal, interesting
pupils to correspond with--in a word, his energy, which sometimes by
necessity and sometimes by ambition had become regulated to too quick a
pace, would not now allow him to take leisure when it offered, or even
to perceive the opportunity. His mind, habituated to unrest, was
perpetually suggesting to him things needing to be done, and he always
saw a mirage of leisure in front of him, and went on the faster in order
to come up to it. By this mirage he constantly vowed to himself that
when the opportunity came he would take time to think out some things
which had grown indistinct to him. At present the discomfort and sorrow
of not feeling at liberty to make love to the woman he loved was some
excuse for avoiding thought, and he found distraction in hard work and
social engagements. With regard to Sophia he stayed his mind on the
belief that if he dared not woo she was not being wooed, either by any
man who was his rival, or by those luxuries and tranquillities of life
which nowadays often lure young women to prefer single blessedness.

In the meantime he felt he had done what he could by writing again and
again, and even telegraphing, to Turrifs Station. It is a great relief
to the modern mind to telegraph when impatient; but when there is
nothing at the other end of the wire but an operator who is under no
official obligation to deliver the message at an address many miles
distant, the action has only the utility already mentioned--the relief
it gives to the mind of the sender. The third week in August came, and
yet he had heard nothing more from Alec. Still, Alec had said he would
come in summer, and if the promise was kept he could not now be long,
and Robert clung to the hope that he would return with ambitions toward
some higher sphere of life, and in a better mind concerning the
advisability of not being too loquacious about his former trade.

In this hope he took opportunity one day about this time, when calling
on Mrs. Rexford, to mention that Alec was probably coming. He desired,
he said, to have the pleasure of introducing him to her.

"He is very true and simple-heaped," said the elder brother; "and from
the photograph you have seen, you will know he is a sturdy lad." He
spoke with a certain air of depression, which Sophia judged to relate to
wild oats she supposed this Alec to be sowing. "He was always his dear
father's favourite boy," added Trenholme, with a quite involuntary sigh.

"A Benjamin!" cried Mrs. Rexford, but, with that quickness of mind
natural to her, she did not pause an instant over the thought.

"Well, really, Principal Trenholme, it'll be a comfort to you to have
him under your own eye. I often say to my husband that that must be our
comfort now--that the children are all under our eye; and, indeed, with
but one sitting-room furnished, and so little outing except in our own
fields, it couldn't well be otherwise. It's an advantage in a way."

"A doubtful advantage in some ways," said Sophia; but the little
children were now heard crying, so she ran from the room.

"Ah, Principal Trenholme," cried the little step-mother, shaking her
head (she was sewing most vigorously the while), "if my children will
but profit by _her_ example! But, indeed, I reproach myself that she is
here at all, although she came against my desire. Sophia is not involved
in our--I might say poverty, Principal Trenholme." (It was the
first-time the word had crossed her lips, although she always conversed
freely to him.) "When I see the farm producing so little in comparison,
I may say, in confidence, _poverty_; but Sophia has sufficient income of
her own." "I did not know that," said Trenholme, sincerely. "She came
with us, for we couldn't think of taking any of it for the house
expenses if she was away; and, as it's not large, it's the more
sacrifice she makes. But Sophia--Sophia might have been a very rich
woman if she'd married the man she was engaged to. Mr. Monekton was only
too anxious to settle everything upon her."

Trenholme had positively started at these words. He did not hear the
next remark. The eight years just passed of Sophia's life were quite
unknown to him, and this was a revelation. He began to hear the talk
again.

"My husband said the jointure was quite remarkable. And then the
carriages and gowns he would have given! You should have seen the jewels
she had! And poor Mr. Monekton--it was one month off the day the wedding
was fixed, for when she broke it off. Suddenly she would have none of
it."

Trying to piece together these staccato jottings by what he knew of the
character of his love, Trenholme's mind was sore with curiosity about it
all, especially with regard to the character of Mr. Monckton.

"Perhaps"--he spoke politely, as if excusing the fickleness of the
absent woman--"perhaps some fresh knowledge concerning the gentleman
reached Miss Rexford."

"For many a year we had known all that was to be known about Mr.
Monckton," declared the mother, vigorously. "Sophia changed her mind. It
was four years ago, but she might be Mrs. Monckton in a month if she'd
say the word. He has never been consoled; her father has just received a
letter from him to-day begging him to renew the subject with her; but
when Sophia changes once she's not likely to alter again. There's not
one in a thousand to equal her."

Trenholme agreed perfectly with the conclusion, even if he did not see
that it was proved by the premises. He went away with his mind much
agitated and filled with new anxieties. The fact that she had once
consented to marry another seemed to him to make it more probable that
she might do so again. He had allowed himself to assume that since the
time when he had seen her as a young girl, the admired of all, Sophia
had drifted entirely out of that sort of relation to society; but now,
by this sudden alarm, she seemed to be again elevated on some pinnacle
of social success beyond his reach. It struck him, too, as discouraging
that he should be able to know so little about a girl he had loved in a
vague way so long, and now for a time so ardently, and who had dwelt for
months at his very door. He blamed the conventionalities of society that
made it impossible for him to ask her the thousand and one questions he
fain would ask, that refused him permission to ask any until he was
prepared to make that offer which involved the explanation from which he
shrank so much that he would fain know precisely what degree of evil he
must ask her to face before he asked at all. He told himself that he
shrank not so much on account of his own dislike, as on account of the
difficulty in which his offer and explanation must place her if she
loved him; for if she was not bound strongly by the prejudices of her
class, all those she cared for certainly were. On the other hand, if she
did not love him, then, indeed, he had reason to shrink from an
interview that would be the taking away of all his hope. Who would not
wrestle hard with hope and fear before facing such an alternative?
Certainly not a man of Trenholme's stamp.

It is a mistake to suppose that decision and fearlessness are always the
attributes of strength. Angels will hover in the equipoise of indecision
while clowns will make up their minds. Many a fool will rush in to woo
and win a woman, who makes her after-life miserable by inconsiderate
dealings with incongruous circumstance, in that very unbending temper of
mind through which he wins at first. Trenholme did not love the less,
either as lover or brother, because he shrank, as from the galling of an
old wound, when the family trade was touched upon. He was not a weaker
man because he was capable of this long suffering. That nature has the
chance to be the strongest whose sensibilities have the power to draw
nourishment of pain and pleasure from every influence; and if such soul
prove weak by swerving aside because of certain pains, because of
stooping from the upright posture to gain certain pleasures, it still
may not be weaker than the more limited soul who knows not such
temptations. If Trenholme had swerved from the straight path, if he had
stooped from the height which nature had given him, the result of his
fault had been such array of reasons and excuses that he did not now
know that he was in fault, but only had hateful suspicion of it when he
was brought to the pass of explaining himself to his lady-love. The
murmurs of an undecided conscience seldom take the form of definite
self-accusation. They did not now; and Trenholme's suspicion that he was
in the wrong only obtruded itself in the irritating perception that his
trouble had a ludicrous side. It would have been easier for him to have
gone to Sophia with confession of some family crime or tragedy than to
say to her, "My father was, my brother is, a butcher; and I have allowed
this fact to remain untold!" It was not that he did not intend to prove
to her that his silence on this subject was simply wise; he still
writhed under the knowledge that such confession, if it did not evoke
her loving sympathy, might evoke her merriment.

That afternoon, however, he made a resolution to speak to Sophia before
another twenty-four hours had passed--a resolution which was truly
natural in its inconsistency; for, after having waited for months to
hear Alec's purpose, he to-day decided to act without reference to him.
At the thought of the renewed solicitation of another lover, his own
love and manliness triumphed over everything else. He would tell her
fully and frankly all that had made him hesitate so long, and of his
long admiration for her, and how dearly he now loved her. He would not
urge her; he would, leave the choice to her. This resolution was not
made by any impulsive yielding to a storm of feeling, nor in the calm of
determined meditation; he simply made up his mind in the course of that
afternoon's occupation.




CHAPTER XVII.


Trenholme went from Mrs. Rexford's door that same day to pay some visits
of duty in the village. The afternoon was warm, and exquisitely bright
with the sort of dazzling brightness that sometimes presages rain. On
his return he met a certain good man who was the Presbyterian minister
of the place. The Scotch church had a larger following in Chellaston
than the English. The clergyman and the minister were friends of a sort,
a friendship which was cultivated on chance occasions as much from the
desire to exercise and display large-mindedness as from the drawings of
personal sympathy. The meeting this afternoon led to their walking out
of the village together; and when the Scotchman had strolled as far as
the college gate, Trenholme, out of courtesy and interest in the
conversation, walked a mile further up the road with him.

Very beautiful was the road on that bright summer day. They heard the
ripple of the river faintly where it was separated from them by the
Harmon garden and the old cemetery. Further on, the sound of the water
came nearer, for there was only the wilderness of half overgrown pasture
and sumac trees between them and it. Then, where the river curved, they
came by its bank, road and river-side meeting in a grove of majestic
pines. The ground here was soft and fragrant with the pine needles of
half a century; the blue water curled with shadowed wave against matted
roots; the swaying firmament was of lofty branches, and the summer wind
touched into harmony a million tiny harps. Minds that were not choked
with their own activities would surely here have received impressions of
beauty; but these two men were engaged in important conversation, and
they only gave impassive heed to a scene to which they were well
accustomed.

They were talking about improvements and additions which Trenholme hoped
to get made to the college buildings in the course of a few years. The
future of the college was a subject in which he could always become
absorbed, and it was one sufficiently identified with the best interests
of the country to secure the attention of his listener. In this land,
where no church is established, there is so little bitterness existing
between different religious bodies, that the fact that the college was
under Episcopal management made no difference to the Presbyterian's
goodwill towards it. He sent his own boys to school there, admired
Trenholme's enthusiastic devotion to his work, and believed as firmly as
the Principal himself that the school would become a great university.
It was important to Trenholme that this man--that any man of influence,
should believe in him, in his college, and in the great future of both.
The prosperity of his work depended so greatly upon the good opinion of
all, that he had grown into the habit of considering hours well spent
that, like this one, were given to bringing another into sympathy with
himself in the matter of the next projected improvement. It was thus
that he had advanced his work step by step since he came to Chellaston;
if the method sometimes struck his inner self as a little sordid, the
work was still a noble one, and the method necessary to the quick
enlargement he desired. Both men were in full tide of talk upon the
necessity for a new gymnasium, its probable cost, and the best means of
raising the money, when they walked out of the pine shade into an open
stretch of the road.

Soft, mountainous clouds of snowy whiteness were winging their way
across the brilliant blue of the sky. The brightness of the light had
wiped all warm colour from the landscape. The airy shadows of the clouds
coursed over a scene in which the yellow of ripened fields, the green of
the woods on Chellaston Mountain, and the blue of the distance, were
only brought to the eye in the pale, cool tones of high light. The road
and the river ran together now as far as might be seen, the one almost
pure white in its inch-deep dust, the other tumbling rapidly, a dancing
mirror for the light.

The talkers went on, unmindful of dust and heat. Then a cloud came
between them and the sun, changing the hue of all things for the moment.
This lured them further. The oat harvest was ready. The reaping machines
were already in the fields far and near, making noise like that of some
new enormous insect of rattling throat. From roadside trees the cicada
vied with them, making the welkin ring.

There were labourers at various occupations in the fields, but on the
dusty stretch of road there was only one traveller to be seen in front
of the two companions. When they gained upon him they recognised the old
preacher who went by the name of Cameron. The poor old wanderer had been
a nine days' wonder; now his presence elicited no comment. He was
walking cap in hand in the sunshine, just as he had walked in the winter
snow. To Trenholme the sight of him brought little impression beyond a
reminder of his brother's wayward course. It always brought that
reminder; and now, underneath the flow of his talk about college
buildings, was the thought that, if all were done and said that might
be, it was possible that it would be expedient for the future of the New
College that the present principal should resign. This was, of course,
an extreme view of the results of Alec's interference; but Trenholme had
accustomed himself to look at his bugbear in all lights, the most
extreme as well as the most moderate. _That_ for the future; and, for
immediate agitation, there was his resolution to speak to Sophia. As he
walked and talked, his heart was wrestling with multiform care.

With one of those welcome surprises which Nature can bestow, the big
swinging cloud which had shadowed their bit of earth for a few minutes
and then passed off the sun again, now broke upon them in a heavy
shower. They saw the rain first falling on Chellaston Mountain, which
was only about a quarter of a mile distant, falling in the sunshine like
perpendicular rays of misty light; then it swept down upon them; but so
bright was the sunshine the while that it took them a few minutes to
realise that this dazzling shower could actually be wet. Its drenching
character was made apparent by the sight of field labourers running to a
great spreading maple for shelter; then they, literally having regard to
their cloth, ran also and joined the group. They passed the old man on
the road, but when they were all under the tree he also came towards it.

There is no power in the art of words, or of painting, or of music, to
fully describe the perfect gratefulness of a shower on a thirsty day.
The earth and all that belongs to her thrill with the refreshing, and
the human heart feels the thrill just in so far as it is one with the
great plan of nature, and has not cut itself off from the whole by
egotism as a dead branch is cut. All under the tree were pleased in
their own way. The labourers cooled their sweating brows by wiping them
with the shirtsleeves the rain had wet; Trenholme and his friend saw
with contentment the dust laid upon their road, listened to the chirp of
birds that had been silent before, and watched the raindrops dance high
upon the sunny surface of the river.

The old man came quietly to them. The rain falling through sunshine made
a silver glory in the air in which he walked saintlike, his hoary locks
spangled with the shining baptism. He did not heed that his old clothes
were wet. His strong, aged face was set as though looking onward and
upward, with the joyful expression habitual to it.

Trenholme and his friend were not insensible to the picture. They were
remarking upon it when the old man came into their midst. There was
something more of keenness and brightness in his mien than was common to
him; some influence, either of the healing summer or of inward joy,
seemed to have made the avenues of his senses more accessible.

"Sirs," he said, "do you desire the coming of the Lord?"

He asked the question quite simply, and Trenholme, as one humours a
village innocent, replied, "We hope we are giving our lives to advance
His kingdom."

"But the _King,_" said the old man. "He is coming. Do you cry to Him to
come quickly?"

"We hope and trust we shall see Him in His own time," said Trenholme,
still benignly.

"His own time is suddenly, in the night," cried the old man, "when the
Church is sleeping, when her children are planting and building,
selling, buying; and marrying--that is _His time_. We shall see Him. We
shall see His face, when we tell Him that we love Him; we shall hear His
voice when he tells us that He loves us. We shall see Him when we pray;
we shall hear Him give the answer. Sirs, do you desire that He should
come now, and reign over you?"

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