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

thin figure looked so odd, bent into this repeated angle, that he almost suspected burlesque, but none was intended. The youth clasped his hands round his knees, the better to keep himself upright, and seated thus a few yards from the body, he shared the watch for some time as mute as was all else in that silent place.

Alec's curiosity became aroused. At last he hesitated in his walk.

"You are from the States?"

"Well, yes; I am. But I reckon I'm prouder of my country than it has reason to be of me. I'm down in the mouth to-night--that's a fact."

A fine description of sorrow would not have been so eloquent, but exactly what he sorrowed for Alec did not know. It could hardly be for the death merely.

Alec paced again. He had made himself an uneven track in the ragged grass. Had the lineaments of the dead been more clearly seen, death would have had a stronger influence; but even as it was, death, darkness, and solitude had a language of their own, in which the hearts of the two men shared more or less.

At length the American spoke, arresting Alec's walk.

"See here," he said, "if what they say is true--and as far as I know it is--he's got up from being dead _once_ already."

The emphasis on the word "once" conveyed the suggestion which had evidently just occurred to him.

"Oh, I know all about _that_ story." Alec spoke with the scorn of superior information, casting off the disagreeable suggestion. "I was there myself."

"You were, were you? Well, so was I, and I tell you I know no more than babe unborn whether this old gentleman's Cameron or not."

Alec's mind was singularly free from any turn for speculative thought. He intended to bring Bates to see the dead in the morning, and that would decide the matter. He saw no sense in debating a question of fact.

"I was one of the fellows in that survey," explained Harkness, "and if you're the fellow we saw at the station, as I reckon you are, then I don't know any more about this old gentleman I've been housing than you do."

Trenholme had an impulse to command silence, but, resisting it, only kept silence himself and resumed his tread over the uneven ground.

"'Tisn't true," broke in the other again, in unexpected denial of his own words, "that that's all I know. I know something more; 'tisn't much, perhaps, but as I value my soul's salvation, I'll say it here. Before I left the neighbourhood of Turrifs, I heard of this old gentleman here a-making his way round the country, and I put in currency the report that he was Cameron, and I've no doubt that that suggestion made the country folks head him off towards Turrifs Station as far as they could influence his route; and that'll be how he came there at Christmas time. Look you here! I didn't know then, and I don't know now, whether he _was_ or _wasn't_--I didn't think he was--but for a scheme I had afoot I set that idea going. I did it by telegraphing it along the line, as if I'd been one of the operators. The thing worked better than I expected."

Alec listened without the feeling of interest the words were expected to arouse. To his mind a fellow who spoke glibly about his soul's salvation was either silly or profane. He had no conception that this man, whose way of regarding his own feelings, and whose standard of propriety as to their expression, differed so much from his own, was, in reality, going through a moral crisis.

"Well?" said he.

"Well, I guess that's about all I have to say."

"If you don't know anything more, I don't see that you've told me anything." He meant, anything worth telling, for he did not feel that he had any interest with the other's tricks or schemes.

"I do declare," cried Harkness, without heeding his indifference, "I'm just cut up about this night's affair; I never thought Job would set on anyone but his wife. I do regret I brought this good old gentleman to this place. If some one offered me half Bates's land now, I wouldn't feel inclined to take it."

Trenholme returned to his pacing, but when he had passed and re-passed, he said, "Cameron doesn't seem to have been able to preach and pray like an educated man; but Bates is here, he will see him to-morrow, and if he doesn't claim the body, the police will advertise. Some one must know who the old man is."

The words that came in return seemed singularly irrelevant. "What about the find of asbestos the surveyor thought he'd got on the hills where Bates's clearing is? Has Bates got a big offer for the land?"

"He has had some correspondence about it," said Trenholme, stiffly.

"He'll be a rich man yet," remarked the American, gloomily. "Asbestos mines are piling in dollars, I can tell you. It's a shame, to my mind, that a snapping crab-stick like that old Bates should have it all." He rose as with the irritation of the idea, but appeared arrested as he looked down at the dead man. "And when I think how them poor ladies got their white skirts draggled, I do declare I feel cut up to that extent I wouldn't care for an asbestos mine if somebody came and offered it to me for nothing this minute."

Then, too absorbed in feeling to notice the bathos of his speech, he put his hands in his pockets, and began strolling up and down a beat of his own, a few yards from the track Trenholme had made, and on the other side of the dead.

As they walked at different paces, and passing each other at irregular times, perhaps the mind of each recurred to the remembrance of the other ghostly incident and the rumour that the old man had already risen once. The open spot of sloping ground surrounded by high black trees, which had been so lately trodden by many feet, seemed now the most desolate of desolate places. The hymn, the prayer, that had arisen there seemed to leave in the air only that lingering influence which past excitement lends to its acute reaction.

A sudden sharp crack and rustling, coming from out the gloom of the trees, startled them.

"Ho!" shouted the American. "Stand! Is there any one there?"

And Alec in his heart called him a fool for his pains, and yet he himself had not been less startled. Nothing more was heard. It was only that time--time, that mysterious medium through which circumstance comes to us from the source of being; that river which, unseen, unfelt, unheard, flows onward everywhere--had just then brought the moment for some dead branch to fall.

END OF BOOK II.


BOOK III.

"Nothing is inexorable but Love."


CHAPTER I.

That which is to be seen of any event, its causes and consequences, is never important compared with the supreme importance of those unseen workings of things physical and things spiritual which are the heart of our life. The iceberg of the northern seas is less than its unseen foundations; the lava stream is less than the molten sea whence it issues; the apple falling to the ground, and the moon circling in her orbit, are less than the great invisible force which controls their movements and the movements of all the things that do appear. The crime is not so great as its motive, nor yet as its results; the beneficent deed is not so great as the beneficence of which it is but a fruit; yet we cannot see beneficence, nor motives, nor far-reaching results. We cannot see the greatest forces, which in hidden places, act and counteract to bring great things without observation; we see some broken fragments of their turmoil which now and again are cast up within our sight.

Notwithstanding this, which we all know, the average man feels himself quite competent to observe and to pass judgment on all that occurs in his vicinity. In the matter of the curious experience which the sect of the Adventists passed through in Chellaston, the greater part of the community formed prompt judgment, and in this judgment the chief element was derision.

The very next day, in the peaceful Sunday sunshine, the good people of Chellaston (and many of them were truly good) spent their breath in expatiating upon the absurdity of those who had met with the madman upon the mountain to pray for the descent of heaven. It was counted a good thing that a preacher so dangerously mad was dead; and it was considered as certain that his followers would now see their folly in the same light in which others saw it. It was reported as a very good joke that when one white-clad woman had returned to her home, wan and weary, in the small hours of the night, her husband had refused to let her in, calling to her from an upper window that _his wife_ had gone to have a fly with the angels, and he did not know who _she_ might be. Another and coarser version of the same tale was, that he had taken no notice of her, but had called to his man that the white cow had got loose and ought to be taken back into the paddock. Both versions were considered excellent in the telling. Many a worthy Christian, coming out of his or her place of worship, chuckled over the wit of this amiable husband, and observed, in the midst of laughter, that his wife, poor thing, had only got her deserts.

In the earlier hours of that Sunday morning rumour had darted about, busily telling of the sudden freak the drunkard's violence had taken, and of Father Cameron's death. Many a version of the story was brought to the hotel, but through them the truth sifted, and the people there heard what had really occurred. Eliza heard, for one, and was a good deal shocked. Still, as the men about the place remarked that it was a happy release for Father Cameron, who had undoubtedly gone to heaven, and that it was an advantage, too, to Job's wife, who would now be saved from further torment at her husband's hands, her mind became acquiescent. For herself, she had no reason to be sorry the old man was dead. It was better for him; it was better for her, too. So, without inward or outward agitation, she directed the morning business of the house, setting all things in such order that she, the guiding hand of it all, might that afternoon take holiday.

Some days before she had been invited by Mrs. Rexford to spend this afternoon with them and take tea. Then, as it was said that Principal Trenholme, in spite of a sprained ankle, had insisted upon taking the Church services as usual, all the fine ladies at the hotel intended to go and hear him preach in the evening. Eliza would go too. This programme was highly agreeable to her, more so than exciting amusement which would have pleased other girls better. Although nothing would have drawn expression of the fact from her, in the bottom of her deeply ambitious heart she felt honoured by the invitations Miss Rexford obtained for her, and appreciated to the full their value. She also knew the worth of suitable attendance at church.

Sunday was always a peaceful day at Chellaston. Much that was truly godly, and much that was in truth worldly, combined together to present a