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

so. Now when he saw her coming--evidently coming on purpose to waylay and speak to him, the excitement he felt was quite unaccountable, even to himself; not that he tried to account for it--he only knew that she was coming, that his heart seemed to beat against his throat, that she had come and laid her hand upon the top of the paling, and looked over at him and said:

"Have they buried him? Did you--have you been there?"

"Yes," said he.

"We have only just heard a rumour that the funeral was taking place. I thought when I saw you that perhaps you had been there. I am so glad you went." Her eyes looked upon him with kind approval.

He fancied from her manner that she thought herself older than he--that she was treating him like a boy. Her face was bright with interest and had the flush of some slight embarrassment upon it.

He told her what had happened and where the grave was, and stood in the sweet evening air with quieted manner before her. She did not seem to be thinking of what he said. "There was something else that I--I rather wanted to take the first opportunity of saying to you."

All her face now was rosy with embarrassment, and he saw that, although she went on bravely, she was shy--shy of him! He hardly took in what she was saying, in the wonder, in the pleasure of it. Then he knew that she had been saying that she feared she had talked to him while mistaking him for his brother, that what she had said had doubtless appeared very wild, very foolish, as he did not know the conversation out of which it grew; probably he had forgotten or had not paid heed at the time, but if he should chance to remember, and had not already repeated her words, would he be kind enough not to do so, and to forget them himself?

This was her request, and he guessed, from the tenor of it, that she did not know how little he had heard in all or how much she had said to him and how much to his brother; that she would like to know, but was too proud to ask or to hear; that, in fact, this proud lady had said words that she was ashamed of.

"I haven't said a word to Robert about it, and of course I won't now." It was a very simple thing to say, yet some way he felt a better man in his own eyes because she had asked him. He did not claim that he had paid no attention or forgotten, for he felt just now that all her words were so supremely worthy of deference that he only wished he could remember more of what she had let fall when her heart was stirred. "Of course," he said, "I didn't know it had been Robert, or I would have gone back for him."

He floundered on into the midst of excuses, and her embarrassment had time to pass away, with it the blush on her face, and he felt as if a sun had somewhere set.

"Thank you" (she was all sedateness now) "I fear that Principal Trenholme is suffering very much from his foot and will be kept in for some time. If you had told me that you had repeated my unjust speeches I should have asked you to take some apology, to say that I am quite willing to acknowledge my own--unreasonableness."

He saw that this speech was intended to cover all the ground, and that he was desired to impart as much of the apology as he believed to be needed, and no more. He remembered now that he had intended to plead Robert's cause, but could think of nothing to say except--

"Robert is--Robert really is an awfully good man."

This he said so suddenly and so earnestly looking at her, that she was betrayed into an unintended answer.

"Is he?" And then in a moment she smiled on him again, and said warmly, "He certainly is if you say that; a brother knows as no one else can."

She was treating him like a boy again. He did not like it now because he had felt the sweetness of having her at an advantage. There are some men who, when they see what they want, stretch out their hands to take it with no more complexity of thought than a baby has when it reaches for a toy. At other times Alec Trenholme might consider; just then he only knew that he wanted to talk longer with this stately girl who was now retiring. He arrested her steps by making a random dash at the first question that might detain her.

There was much that, had he known his own mind clearly and how to express it, he would have liked to say to her. Deep down within him he was questioning whether it was possible always to live under such impulse of fealty to Heaven as had befallen him under the exciting influence of Cameron's expectation, whether the power of such an hour to sift the good from the evil, the important from the unimportant in life, could in any wise be retained. But he would have been a wholly different man from what he was had he thought this concisely, or said it aloud. All that he did was to express superficial curiosity concerning the sentiments of others, and to express it inanely enough.

"Do you think," he said, "that all those poor people--my brother's housekeeper, for instance--do you think they really thought--really expected--"

"I think--" she said. (She came back to the fence and clasped her hands upon it in her interest.) "Don't you think, Mr. Trenholme, that a person who is always seeking the Divine Presence, lives in it and has power to make other people know that it is near? But then, you see, these others fancy they must model their seeking upon the poor vagaries of their teacher. We are certain that the treasure is found, but--we mix up things so, things are really so mixed, that we suppose we must shape our ideas upon the earthen vessel that holds it. I don't know whether I have said what I mean, or if you understand--" she stopped.

She was complaining that people will not distinguish between the essence of the heaven-sent message and the accident of form in which it comes. He did not quite understand, because, if the truth must be told, he had not entirely listened; for although all the spiritual nature that was in him was stimulated by hers, a more outward sympathy asserted itself too; he became moved with admiration and liking for her, and feeling struggled with thought.

"Yes," he said, dreaming of her alone, "if one could always be with people who are good, it would be easier to do something worth doing."

Notwithstanding her interest in what she was saying, Sophia began now to see the inclination of his heart for her as one might see a trivial detail of landscape while looking at some absorbing thing, such as a race. She saw the homage he inwardly proffered more clearly than he saw it himself. She had seen the same thing before often enough to know it.

"I think," she continued, "if I had been very ignorant, and had seen a good deal of this old man, I would have followed him anywhere, because I would have thought the spiritual force of his life was based on his opinions, which must therefore be considered true. Isn't that the way we are apt to argue about any phase of Church or Dissent that has vitality?"

But the knowledge she had just come by was making its way to a foremost place in her thought, and her open heart closed gently as a sensitive plant closes its leaves. As he watched the animation of her face, he saw the habitual reserve come over it again like a shadow. He felt that she was withdrawing from him as truly as if she had been again walking away, although now she stood still where his renewal of talk had stopped her. He tried again to grasp at the moment of gracious chance, to claim her interest, but failed.

He went on down the road. He had not guessed the lady had seen his heart, for he hardly saw it himself; yet he called himself a blundering fool. He wondered that he had dared to talk with her so long, yet he wondered more that he had not dared to talk longer. In all this he never thought of social grades, as he had done in connection with the smiles of the Miss Browns. Sophia Rexford had struck his fancy more as a superior being; and to angels, or to the Madonna, we do not seek to recommend ourselves by position or pedigree.

The strong, clear evening light, tinted with gold, was upon everything. He felt that if he could but live near the woman he had left, the problem of living would become simple, and the light of life's best hours would shine for him always; but he entered into no fine distinction of ideal friendships.


CHAPTER V.

In the meantime the elder of the brothers Trenholme had not the satisfaction of meeting with Sophia Rexford, or of going to see the strange old man laid away in his last resting-place.

Robert Trenholme lay in his house, suffering a good deal of physical pain, suffering more from restlessness of nerve caused by his former tense activity, suffering most from the consideration of various things which were grievous to him.

He had been flouted by the woman he loved. The arrow she had let fly had pierced his heart and, through that, his understanding. He never told her, or anyone, how angry he had been at the first stab that wounded, nor that, when the familiar sound of his brother's voice came to him in the midst of this anger, he had been dumb rather than claim kindred in that place with the young man who, by his actions, had already taken up the same reproach. No, he never told them that it was more in surly rage than because he had slipped in the ditch that he had let them go on without him in the darkness; but he knew that this had been the case; and, although he was aware of no momentous consequences following on this lapse, he loathed himself for it, asking by what gradual steps he had descended to be capable of such a moment of childish and churlish temper. He was a product of modern culture, and had the devil who had overcome him been merely an unforgiving spirit, or the spirit of sarcastic wit or of self-satisfied indifference, he might hardly have noticed that he had fallen from the high estate of Christian manhood, even though the fiend jumped astride his back and ambled far on him; but when he found that he had been overcome by a natural impulse of passionate wrath he was appalled, and was philosopher enough to look for the cause of such weakness prior to the moment of failure. Was it true, what Sophia had said, that he had sold his birthright for a little paltry prosperity? He thought more highly of her discrimination than any one else would have done, because he loved her. What had she seen in him to make her use that form of accusation? And if it was true, was there for him no place of repentance?

Then he remembered the purer air of the dark mountaintop. There