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

truth, if I thought the millennium was coming to-night I'd be real scared, although I've lived better than most young men of my age do; but, some way, the millennium isn't the sort of thing I seem to hanker after very much. I suppose, though, people as good as you would like nothing so well as to see it begin at once."

Trenholme looked down at the sheet of paper before him, and absently made marks upon it with his pen. He was thinking of the spiritual condition of a soul which had no ardent desire for the advent of its Lord, but it was not of the young man he was thinking.

"Of course," the latter continued, "I didn't suppose myself there was anything in it--at least"--candidly--"I didn't in the day-time; but when I found he'd gone out in the dark, and thought of all the times I'd heard him praying--" he broke off. "He's real good. I'm a better fellow for having lived with him so long, but I wish to goodness I'd never caught him."

The word "caught," so expressive of the American's relation to the wanderer, roused Trenholme's attention, and he asked now with interest, "May I inquire why you did take possession of him and bring him here?"

"Well, as to that, I don't know that I'd like to tell," said the young man, frankly. "Since I've lived with him I've seen my reasons to be none of the best." He fidgeted now, rising, cap in hand. "I ought to go and look after him," he said, "if I only knew where to go."

It struck Trenholme that Harkness had an idea where to go, and that his questioning was really a prelude to its announcement. "Where do _you_ think he has gone?"

"Well, if you ask me what I think, Principal--but, mind, I haven't a word of proof of it--I think he's gone up the mountain, and that he's not gone there alone."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I think drunken Job's wife, and old McNider, and some more of the Second Advent folks, will go with him, expecting to be caught up."

"Impossible!" cried Trenholme, vehemently. Then more soberly, "Even if they had such wild intentions, the weather would, of course, put a stop to it."

Harkness did not look convinced. "Job's threatened to beat his wife to death if she goes, and it's my belief she'll go."

He twirled his hat as he spoke. He was, in fact, trying to get the responsibility of his suspicions lightened by sharing them with Trenholme at this eleventh hour, but his hearer was not so quickly roused.

"If you believe that," he said coolly, "you ought to give information to the police."

"The police know all that I know. They've heard the people preaching and singing in the streets. I can't make them believe the story if they don't. They'd not go with me one step on a night like this--not one step."

There was a short silence. Trenholme was weighing probabilities. On the whole, he thought the police were in the right of it, and that this young man was probably carried away by a certain liking for novel excitement.

"In any case," he said aloud, "I don't see what I can do in the matter."

Harkness turned to leave as abruptly as he had come in. "If you don't, I see what I can do. I'm going along there to see if I can find them."

"As you are in a way responsible for the old man, perhaps that is your duty," replied Trenholme, secretly thinking that on such roads and under such skies the volatile youth would not go very far.

A blast of wind entered the house door as Harkness went out of it, scattering Trenholme's papers, causing his study lamp to flare up suddenly, and almost extinguishing it.

Trenholme went on with his writing, and now a curious thing happened. About nine o'clock he again heard steps upon his path, and the bell rang. Thinking it a visitor, he stepped to the door himself, as he often did. There was no one there but a small boy, bearing a large box on his shoulders. He asked for Mrs. Martha. "Have you got a parcel for her?" said Trenholme, thinking his housekeeper had probably retired, as she did not come to the door. The boy signified that he had, and made his way into the light of the study door. Trenholme saw now, by the label on the box, that he had come from the largest millinery establishment the place could boast. It rather surprised him that the lean old woman should have been purchasing new apparel there, but there was nothing to be done but tell the boy to put out the contents of the box and be gone. Accordingly, upon a large chair the boy laid a white gown of delicate material, and went away.

Trenholme stood contemplating the gown; he even touched it lightly with his hand, so surprised he was. He soon concluded there was some mistake, and afterwards, when he heard the housekeeper enter the kitchen from the garden door, he was interested enough to get up with alacrity and call to her. "A gown has come for you, Mrs. Martha," he cried. Now, he thought, the mistake would be proved; but she only came in soberly, and took up the gown as if it was an expected thing. He bade her good-night. "Good-night," said she, looking at him. There was a red spot on each of her thin, withered cheeks. He heard her footstep mounting her bedroom staircase, but no clue to the mystery of her purchase offered itself to mitigate his surprise. Had she not been his housekeeper now for six years, and during that time not so much as a trace of any vagary of mind had he observed in her.

About an hour afterwards, when he had gone into the next room to look for some papers, he heard quiet sounds going on in the kitchen, which was just at the rear end of the small hall on which the room doors opened. A moment more and he surmised that his housekeeper must have again descended for something. "Are you there, Mrs. Martha?" he called. There was no answer in words, but hearing the kitchen door open, he looked into the lobby, and there a strange vision flashed on his sight. His end of the lobby was dark, but in the kitchen doorway, by the light of the candles she held, he saw his elderly housekeeper arrayed in the pure white gown.

He paused in sheer astonishment, looking at her, and he observed she trembled--trembled all over with the meek courage it cost her to thus exhibit herself; for she appeared to have opened the door for no other purpose than to let him see her. She said nothing, and he--most men are cowards with regard to women--he had a vague sense that it was his duty to ask her why she wore that dress, but he did not do it. He had no reason to suppose her mad; she had a perfect right to array herself in full dress at night if she chose; she was a great deal older than he, a woman worthy of all respect. This was the tenor of his thought--of his self-excusing, it might be. He bade her good-night again, somewhat timidly. Surely, he thought, it was her place to make remark, if remark were needful; but she stood there silent till he had gone back into the room. Then she shut the kitchen door.

In a little while, however, as stillness reigned in the house, some presentiment of evil made him think it would be as well to go and see if Mrs. Martha had finished trying on her finery and gone to bed as usual. He found the kitchen dark and empty. He went to the foot of her stairs. There was no chink of light showing from her room. The stillness of the place entered into his mind as the thin edge of a wedge of alarm. "Mrs. Martha!" he called in sonorous voice. "Mrs. Martha!" But no one answered. He opened the back-door, and swept the dark garden with the light of his lamp, but she was not there. Lamp in hand, he went upstairs, and passed rapidly through the different rooms. As he entered the less frequented ones, he began to fear almost as much to see the gaily-attired figure as he would have done to see a ghost. He did not know why this feeling crept over him, but, whether he feared or hoped to see her, he did not. The house was empty, save for himself. The night blast beat upon it. The darkness outside was rife with storm, but into it the old woman must have gone in her festal array.


CHAPTER XX.

Trenholme went out on the verandah. At first, in the night, he saw nothing but the shadowy forms of the college building and of the trees upon the road. It was not raining at the moment, but the wind made it hard to catch any sound continuously. He thought he heard talking of more than one voice, he could not tell where. Then he heard wheels begin to move on the road. Presently he saw something passing the trees--some vehicle, and it was going at a good pace out from the village. Shod though he was only in slippers, he shut his door behind him, and ran across the college grounds to the road; but the vehicle was already out of sight, and on the soft mud he could hear no further sound.

Trenholme stood hardly knowing what to think. He wore no hat; the damp, cool air was grateful to his head, but he gave no thought to it. Just then, from the other way of the road, he heard a light, elastic step and saw a figure that, even in the darkness, he could not fail to know.

"Sophia!" There was fear in his voice.

"Have you seen Winifred?" she cried.

"Winifred? No," he called, back.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, breathless. She never noticed that he had called her by name. The abruptness of her own question was evidently atoned for by some necessity the nature of which he had not yet entirely grasped. Yet a knowledge, gleaned too late from all the occurrences of the evening, leaped up within him to anticipate her tidings.

"Winifred has gone out since dark. Whether she is alone or not I don't know, but she has gone to the mountain. She means to climb it to-night because they have told her that--that----"

His lady-love stopped. Voice and language seemed alike to fail her when she essayed to tell him, and he, awed at the thought of hearing such sacred words from her lips, awed to think that the sword of this fanaticism had come so near as to strike the pure young girl who was so dear to them both, took her pause as if it had told him everything.

"How do you know?" His words were brief and stern.

She was walking on, he thought merely from excitement. As he kept up with her he perceived, more by quickness of sympathy than by any sign, that, in her effort to speak, she had begun to weep. She walked erect, giving no heed to her own tears nor lifting a hand to wipe them, only at first her throat refused to articulate a reply, and when she spoke it was quickly, a word or two at a time, as though she feared her voice would be