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

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?"

The labourers bestirred themselves and came nearer. The old man had always the power of transmitting his excitements to others, so that, strangely, they felt it incumbent upon them to answer. One, a dull-looking man, answered "yes," with conventional piety. Another said sincerely that he would like to get the oats in first. Then, when the first effect of the enthusiast's influence was passing off, they began to rebel at having this subject thrust upon them. A youth said rudely that, as there were two parsons there, Father Cameron was not called on to preach.

The old man fixed his questioning look on Trenholme. "He will come to reign," he cried, "to exalt the lowly and meek, to satisfy the men who hunger for righteousness; and the pure in heart shall live with Him. Sir, do you desire that He shall come now?"

Trenholme did not give answer as before.

"Poor fellow," said the Presbyterian, pityingly.

The shower was passing over, and they moved away.

The old man lifted his arm, and pointed to the mountain that stood in all the beauty of its wet verdure. He looked round upon them all, and there was unusual show of excitement in his manner.

"I have a message to you," he said. "Before another Lord's, day comes, _He_ will come."

The two ministers heard him as they walked away, and the Scotchman thought to go back and reprove such an audacious word.

"He is mad; they all know that he is mad," urged Trenholme, dissuading him.

They looked back, and saw the old man still preaching to the labourers under the tree. A mare with its foal, and two half-grown colts, had come up to an open fence within the tree's shadow, and, with their long gentle heads hanging over, they too seemed to be listening.

The Scotchman, exhilarated by the cooling of the atmosphere, genially invited Trenholme to a longer walk. Chellaston Mountain, with its cool shades and fine prospect, was very near. A lane turned from the high road, which led to the mountain's base. A hospitable farmhouse stood where the mountain path began to ascend, suggesting sure offer of an evening meal. Trenholme looked at the peaceful lane, the beautiful hill, and all the sunny loveliness of the land, and refused the invitation. He had not time, he said.

So they walked back the mile they had come, and Trenholme little thought how soon, and with what agitation, he would pass that way again.


CHAPTER XVIII.

The next day, before Trenholme had had time to devise a plan for seeing Miss Rexford, Mrs. Martha brought him a telegram. She watched him as he drew his finger through the poor paper of the envelope, watched him as one might watch another on the eve of some decisive event; yet she could not have expected much from a telegram--they came too often.

"Ha!" cried Trenholme, "we are going to have visitors, Mrs.