What Necessity Knows by Lily Dougall (web ebook reader TXT) 📕

I; when I was at home, I was in a better place: but travellers must be content."

Trenholme smiled. He had actually so controlled his mind as to become lost in his book.

There was a sound as if of movement on the light snow near by and of hard breathing. Trenholme's senses were all alert again now as he turned his head to listen. When the moving figure had seemed so indifferent to his calls, what reason could it have now for seeking his door--unless, indeed, it were a dead man retracing his steps by some mysterious impulse, such as even the dead might feel? Trenholme's heart beat low with the thought as he heard a heavy body bump clumsily against the baggage-room door and a hand fumble at its latch. There was enough light shining through his window to have shown any natural man that the small door of his room was the right one by which to enter, yet the fumbling at the other door continued.

Trenholme went into the dark baggage-room and heard the stir against the door outside. He went near it. Whoever was there went on fumbling to find some way of entrance.

By this time, if Trenholme had suffered any shock of dismay, he had righted himself, as a ship rights itself after shuddering beneath a wave. Clearly it now came within his province to find out what the creature wanted; he went back into his room and opened its outer door.

Extending beyond the wall, the flooring of the house made a little platform outside, and, as the opening of the door illuminated this, a man came quietly across the threshold with clumsy gait. This man was no ghost. What fear of the supernatural had gathered about Trenholme's mind fell off from it instantly in self-scorn. The stranger was tall and strong, dressed in workman's light-coloured clothes, with a big, somewhat soiled bit of white cotton worn round his shoulders as a shawl. He carried in his hand a fur cap such as Canadian farmers wear; his grey head was bare. What was chiefly remarkable was that he passed Trenholme without seeming to see him, and stood in the middle of the room with a look of expectation. His face, which was rugged, with a glow of weather-beaten health upon it, had a brightness, a strength, an eagerness, a sensibility, which were indescribable.

"Well?" asked Trenholme rather feebly; then reluctantly he shut the door, for all the cold of the night was pouring in. Neither of him nor of his words or actions did the old man take the slightest notice.

The description that had been given of old Cameron was fulfilled in the visitor; but what startled Trenholme more than this likeness, which might have been the result of mere chance, was the evidence that this man was not a person of ordinary senses and wits. He seemed like one who had passed through some crisis, which had deprived him of much, and given him perhaps more. It appeared probable, from his gait and air, that he was to some extent blind; but the eagerness of the eyes and the expression of the aged face were enough to suggest at once, even to an unimaginative mind, that he was looking for some vision of which he did not doubt the reality and listening for sounds which he longed to hear. He put out a large hand and felt the table as he made his clumsy way round it. He looked at nothing in the room but the lamp on the table where Trenholme had lately put it. Trenholme doubted, however, if he saw it or anything else. When he got to the other side, having wandered behind the reflector, he stopped, as if perhaps the point of light, dimly seen, had guided him so far but now was lost.

Trenholme asked him why he had come, what his name was, and several such questions. He raised his voice louder and louder, but he might as well have talked to the inanimate things about him. This one other human being who had entered his desolate scene took, it would seem, no cognisance of him at all. Just as we know that animals in some cases have senses for sights and sounds which make no impression on human eyes and ears, and are impervious to what we see and hear, so it seemed to Trenholme that the man before him had organs of sense dead to the world about him, but alive to something which he alone could perceive. It might have been a fantastic idea produced by the strange circumstances, but it certainly was an idea which leaped into his mind and would not be reasoned away. He did not feel repulsion for the poor wanderer, or fear of him; he felt rather a growing attraction--in part curiosity, in part pity, in part desire for whatever it might be that had brought the look of joyous expectancy into the aged face. This look had faded now to some extent. The old man stood still, as one who had lost his way, not seeking for indications of that which he had lost, but looking right forwards and upwards, steadily, calmly, as if sure that something would appear.

Trenholme laid a strong hand upon his arm. "Cameron!" he shouted, to see if that name would rouse him. The arm that he grasped felt like a rock for strength and stillness. The name which he shouted more than once did not seem to enter the ears of the man who had perhaps owned it in the past. He shook off Trenholme's hand gently without turning towards him.

"Ay," he said. (His voice was strong.) Then he shook his head with a patient sigh. "Not here," he said, "not here." He spoke as deaf men speak, unconscious of the key of their own voice. Then he turned shuffling round the table again, and seemed to be seeking for the door.

"Look here," said Trenholme, "don't go out." Again he put his hand strongly on his visitor, and again he was quietly brushed aside. The outside seemed so terribly cold and dark and desolate for this poor old man to wander in, that Trenholme was sorry he should go. Yet go he did, opening the door and shutting it behind him.

Trenholme's greatcoat, cap, and snow-shoes were hanging against the wall. He put them on quickly. When he got out the old man was fumbling for something outside, and Trenholme experienced a distinct feeling of surprise when he saw him slip his feet into an old pair of snow-shoes and go forth on them. The old snow-shoes had only toe-straps and no other strings, and the feat of walking securely upon seemed almost as difficult to the young Englishman as walking on the sea of frozen atoms without them; but still, the fact that the visitor wore them made him seem more companionable.

Trenholme supposed that the traveller was seeking some dwelling-place, and that he would naturally turn either up the road to Turrifs or toward the hills; instead of that, he made again for the birch wood, walking fast with strong, elastic stride. Trenholme followed him, and they went across acres of billowy snow.


CHAPTER II.

Why Alec Trenholme followed the old man toward the wood he himself would have found it a little difficult to tell. If this was really Cameron he did not wish that he should escape; but, at the same time, he saw no means of keeping him against his will, unless he went of his own accord to some place where other men could be called to help. Quite apart, however, from the question whether the stranger was Cameron or not, Trenholme felt for him a sort of respect which character alone inspires, and which character written in a man's appearance has often power to inspire without a word or action to interpret it further. It was because of this that curiosity to know where he was going and what for, and a real solicitude as to what would happen to him, were strong enough to lead the young man on.

They who have not walked upon snow by starlight do not know, perhaps, that the chief difficulty of such progress is that there is no shadow; perhaps they do not even know that at all times the difference between an upward and a downward slope is revealed to the eye by light and shade. The snow on which the two men were now walking had been left by the wind with slight undulations of surface, such as are produced in a glassy sea by the swing of a gentle under-swell; and Trenholme, not sensitive as the stranger seemed to be in the points of his snow-shoes, found himself stepping up when he thought himself stepping down, and the reverse. At last he stumbled and fell.

It is not a matter of ease to rise from a bed which yields endlessly to every pressure of arm or knee. Even a sea-bird, that strongest of flyers, finds it hard to rise from any but its own element; and before Trenholme had managed to spring up, as it were, from nothing, the man in front had in some way become aware of his presence for the first time, and of his fall; he turned and lifted him up with a strong hand. When Trenholme was walking again the other retained a firm hold of his arm, looked at him earnestly, and spoke to him. His words expressed a religious idea which was evidently occupying his whole mind.

"The Lord is coming presently to set up His kingdom," he said. "Are you ready to meet Him?"

On Alec Trenholme the effect of these words, more unexpected than any other words could have been, was first and chiefly to convince him that he was dealing with a witless person. Leaving him again, the speaker had hurried on in front, making his way still toward the wood. When Trenholme came up with him the wanderer had evidently found the place where he had been before, for there was the irregular circular track of his former wandering upon the snow. Trenholme counted himself a fool to have been able before to suppose that there was no track because he had not seen it. But he had hardly time for even this momentary glance at so small a matter, for the old man was standing with face uplifted to the stars, and he was praying aloud that the Divine Son of Man would return to earth and set up His kingdom.

Sometimes there was more light upon the dark scene, sometimes less, for giant rays of the northern light stalked the sky, passing from it, coming again, giving light faintly.

Trenholme felt an uncontrollable excitement come over him. His mind was carried out of himself, not so much to the poor man who was praying, as to the Divine Man to whom the supplication was addressed; for the voice of prayer spoke directly from the heart of the speaker to One who he evidently felt was his friend. The conviction of this other man that he knew to whom he was speaking caught hold of Alec Trenholme's mind with mastering force; he had no conviction of his own; he was not at all sure, as men count certainty, whether there was, or was not, any ear but his own listening to the other's words; but he did not notice his own belief or unbelief in the matter, any more than he noticed the air between him and the stars. The colourlessness of his own mind took on for the time the colour of the other's.

And the burden of the prayer was this: Our Father,