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

traitor to her.

"She left a paper for me." And then she added, "She wrote on it--what she was afraid to say--dear child!"

He was silent a moment, listening with bowed head lest she should tell more. He thought he saw her now dash the tears from her face. She was walking fast, and he felt that she must not go further, also that he had no time to lose; so he told her hastily that he thought his housekeeper had gone also to the mountain, and why he thought so. He said that he hoped and believed Winifred would be with her, and that it was not many minutes since they had driven away. He would go at once, hoping to overtake them on the difficult ascent, and Miss Rexford, he said, must go home and send her father and brother to aid him in his search.

She never stopped in her steady walk. "You know they are not at home."

He was shocked to remember it. "Never mind!" he cried, "I will go with your authority. I will bring her back."

Still she did not waver in her walk. She spoke thickly out of her tears. "You may go to find this woman who has worked for you so long; I will go for Winifred."

"You must not come," he said almost harshly. "It is far too late; it is far too wet."

He stopped to make her stop, but she only went on, getting much in front. Then he ran up to her, laid his hand on her arm, and implored her not to go.

There was nothing in his words or action that was precisely loverlike, nor did such likeness occur to her; but in the restraint he put upon the lover in him, his manner appeared to assume the confidence and ease of a perfect friendship, and she, scarce noting much how he spoke or acted, still felt that this advance of his gave her a new liberty to tell him that she scorned his friendship, for she had something of that sort seething in her mind concerning him. As to his request just then, she merely said she would go on.

He was very urgent. "Then I will not go," he said, stopping again. "You can't go without me, and if my going involves your going, it is better not to go." He did not mean what he said, but he hoped to move her.

"You can go or stay as you think right," she said. "I am going to get Winifred, poor lamb. I am not in the least afraid to go alone. I have got a pistol in my belt."

So he went with her. They both walked fast. The road was wide and muddy, and the night was very dark.

Trenholme noticed now for the first time that he walked in slippers; he would as soon have thought of turning back on this account as he would have thought of stopping if thorns and briars had beset his path. He felt almost as if it were a dream that he was walking thus, serving the woman he loved; but even as he brooded on the dreamlike strangeness of it, his mind was doing its practical work. If Winifred and Mrs. Martha were in the vehicle he had seen, what time they would gain while driving on the road they would be apt to lose by their feebleness on the mountain path, which he and Sophia could ascend so much more lightly. Wherever their goal, and whatever their purpose, he was sanguine that he would find and stop them before they joined the main party. He communicated the grounds of this hope to his companion. His heart was sore for his lady's tears. He had never before seen her weep. They had passed the cemetery, and went forward now into the lonelier part of the road. Then Trenholme thought of the warning Harkness had given him about the drunkard's violence. The recollection made him hasten on, forgetting that his speed was almost too great for a woman.

In the stir of events we seldom realise to the full the facts with which we are dealing, certainly never perceive at first their full import. Trenholme, however, after some minutes of tramping and thinking, felt that he had reason for righteous indignation, and became wroth. He gave vent to strictures upon superficiality of character, modern love of excitement, and that silly egotism that, causing people to throw off rightful authority, leaves them an easy prey to false teachers. He was not angry with Winifred--he excepted her; but against those who were leading her astray his words were harsh, and they would have flowed more freely had he not found language inadequate to express his growing perception of their folly.

When he had talked thus for some time Sophia answered, and he knew instantly, from the tone of her voice, that her tears had dried themselves.

"Are you and I able to understand the condition of heart that is not only resigned, but eager to meet Him Whom they hope to meet--able so fully to understand that we can judge its worth?"

He knew her face so well that he seemed to see the hint of sarcasm come in the arching of her handsome eyebrows as she spoke.

"I fear they realise their hope but little," he replied. "The excitement of some hysterical outbreak is what they seek."

"It seems to me that is an ungenerous and superficial view, especially as we have never seen the same people courting hysterics before," she said; but she did not speak as if she cared much which view he took.

Her lack of interest in his opinion, quite as much as her frank reproof, offended him. They walked in silence for some minutes. Thunder, which had been rumbling in the distance, came nearer and every now and then a flash from an approaching storm lit up the dark land with a pale, vivid light.

"Even setting their motives at the highest estimate," he said, "I do not know that you, or even I, Miss Rexford, need hold ourselves incapable of entering into them." This was not exactly what he would have felt if left to himself, but it was what her upbraiding wrung from him. He continued: "Even if we had the sure expectation for to-night that they profess to have, I am of opinion that we should express our devotion better by patient adherence to our ordinary duties, by doing all we could for the world up to the moment of His appearing."

"Our ordinary duties!" she cried; "_they_ are always with us! I dare say you and I might think that the fervour of this night's work had better have been converted into good works and given to the poor; but our opinion is not specially likely to be the true one. What do we know? Walking here in the dark, we can't even see our way along this road."

It was an apt illustration, for their eyes were becoming so dazzled by the occasional lightning that they could make no use of its brief flash, or of the faint light of night that was mingled in the darkness of the intervals.

Although he smarted under the slight she put upon him, he was weary of opposing her, because he loved her. "I am sorry that nothing I say meets with your approval," he said sadly.

It was lack of tact that made him use the personal tone when he and she had so far to travel perforce together, and she, being excited and much perturbed in spirit, had not the grace to answer wisely.

"Happily it matters little whether what you say pleases me or not."

She meant in earnestness to depreciate herself, and to exalt that higher tribunal before which all opinions are arraigned; still, there was in the answer a tinge of spite, telling him by the way that it did not distress her to differ with him. It was not wonderful that Trenholme, self-conscious with the love she did not guess at, took the words only as a challenge to his admiration.

"Indeed you wrong me. It was long ago I proved the value I put upon your advice by acting upon it in the most important decision of my life."

She had so long tacitly understood what her influence over him at that time had been that she could not now be much affected by the avowal.

"Indeed, if you recklessly mistook the advice of a vain child for wisdom, it is to be hoped that Providence has shaped your ends for you."

He did not understand her mood; he only thought of protesting his long loyalty to her. "It is true," said he, "that Providence has done more for me than I have done for myself; but I have always been glad to attribute my coming here to your beneficent influence."

Her heart was like flint to him at that moment, and in his clumsiness he struck sparks from it.

"Yet when I remember how you tried to explain to me then that the poor parish in which you were working might be offering the nobler life-work for you, I think that you were wiser than I. In their serious moments people can judge best for themselves, Mr. Trenholme."

He had noticed that, in the rare times she addressed him by name, she never used his big-sounding title of Principal. This little habit of hers, differently read before, seemed now like a clue to guide him to the meaning of her last remark, partly wrapped as it was in her politeness. He was no dullard; once on the track of her thought, he soon came up with her. In surprise he faced her insinuation squarely.

"You mean to tell me that you think I have not done well."

Half startled, she could think of no answer but the silence that gives consent.

"Is it for myself or others I have done ill?" he asked.

"The world here speaks loudly of your exertions on its behalf; I have never doubted the truth of its report."

"Then you consider that I myself am not what you would wish?" There was neither anger nor graciousness in his tone. His mind, arrested, merely sought to know further, and feeling had not yet arisen.

"You alarm me," she said coldly. "I had no thought of bringing these questions upon myself."

But it was of moment to him to know her mind.

"I spoke inadvisedly," she added.

"Yet you spoke as you thought?" he asked.

Fast as they were walking, she could not but notice that they were in the pine grove now, close by the river. Here the gale was loud, reminding her afresh of the loneliness of the place, and, as she felt the force of his question pressing upon her, all her energies rushed in anger to her self-defence.

"Yes, I said what I thought; but I ask your pardon for any truthfulness. Question me no further."

His stronger will was also roused. In bitterness of spirit he told her that he had a right to know her full meaning. He plied her with questions. When in steady tramp they came out on the open stretch of road between the pines and the mountain, over the noise of the swollen river he heard what she thought of him.


CHAPTER XXI.

That afternoon Alec Trenholme had essayed to bring his friend John Bates to Chellaston. Bates was in a very feeble state, bowed with asthma, and exhausted by a cough that seemed to be sapping his