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

is an inexplicable and unreasoning pleasure in dealing with water that no operation upon land can yield. Bates was one of these; he would hardly have chosen his present lot if it had not been so; but, like many a dry character of his stamp, he did not give his more agreeable sensations the name of pleasure, and therefore could afford to look upon pleasure as an element unnecessary to a sober life. Mid pushings and splashings, from the management of his scow, from air and sky, hill and water, he was in reality, deriving as great pleasure as any millionaire might from the sailing of a choice yacht; but he was aware only that, as he neared the end of his double journey, he felt in better trim in mind and body to face his lugubrious and rebellious ward.

When, however, he had toiled round the black rock cliff which hid the clearing from the river's head, and was again in full sight of his own house, all remembrance of the girl and his dread of meeting her passed from him in his excessive surprise at seeing several men near his dwelling. His dog was barking and leaping in great excitement. He heard the voices of other dogs. It took but the first glance to show him that the men were not Indians. Full of excited astonishment he pushed his boat to the shore.

His dog, having darted with noisy scatter of dry leaves down the hill to meet him, stood on the shore expectant with mouth open, excitement in his eyes and tail, saying as clearly as aught can be said without words--"This is a very agreeable event in our lives. Visitors have come." The moment Bates put his foot on land the dog bounded barking up the hill, then turned again to Bates, then again bounded off toward the visitors. Even a watchdog may be glad to see strangers if the pleasure is only rare enough.

Bates mounted the slope as a man may mount stairs--two steps at a time. Had he seen the strangers, as the saying is, dropping from the clouds, he could hardly have been more surprised than he was to see civilised people had reached his place otherwise than by the lake, for the rugged hills afforded nothing but a much longer and more arduous way to any settlement within reach. When he got up, however, he saw that these men carried with them implements of camp-life and also surveying instruments, by which he judged, and rightly, that his guests were ranging the lonely hills upon some tour of official survey.

That the travellers _were_ his guests neither he nor they had the slightest doubt. They had set down their traps close to his door, and, in the calm confidence that it would soon be hospitably opened by rightful hands, they had made no attempt to open it for themselves. There were eight men in the party, two of whom, apparently its more important members, sauntered to meet Bates, with pipes in their mouths. These told him what district they were surveying, by what track they had just come over the hill, where they had camped the past night, where they wanted to get to by nightfall. They remarked on the situation of his house and the extent of his land. They said to him, in fact, more than was immediately necessary, but not more than was pleasant for him to hear or for them to tell. It is a very taciturn man who, meeting a stranger in a wilderness, does not treat him with more or less of friendly loquacity.

Under the right circumstances Bates was a genial man. He liked the look of these men; he liked the tone of their talk; and had he liked them much less, the rarity of the occasion and the fact that he was their host would have expanded his spirits. He asked astute questions about the region they had traversed, and, as they talked, he motioned them towards the house. He had it distinctly in his mind that he was glad they had come across his place, and that he would give them a hot breakfast; but he did not say so in words--just as they had not troubled to begin their conversation with him by formal greetings.

The house door was still shut; there was still no smoke from the chimney, although it was now full three hours since Bates had left the place. Saying that he would see if the women were up, he went alone into the house. The living-room was deserted, and, passing through the inner door, which was open, he saw his aunt, who, according to custom was neatly dressed, sitting on the foot of Sissy's empty bed. The old woman was evidently cold, and frightened at the unusual sounds outside; greatly fretted, she held the girl's night-cap in her hand, and the moment he appeared demanded of him where Sissy was, for she must have her breakfast. The girl he did not see.

The dog had followed him. He looked up and wagged his tail; he made no sign of feeling concern that the girl was not there. Bates could have cursed his dumbness; he would fain have asked where she had gone. The dog probably knew, but as for Bates, he not only did not know, but no conjecture rose in his mind as to her probable whereabouts.

He took his aunt to her big chair, piled the stove from the well-stored wood-box, and lit it. Then, shutting the door of the room where the disordered bed lay and throwing the house-door open, he bid the visitors enter. He went out himself to search the surroundings of the house, but Sissy was not to be found.

The dog did not follow Bates on this search. He sat down before the stove in an upright position, breathed with his mouth open, and bestowed on the visitors such cheerful and animated looks that they talked to and patted him. Their own dogs had been shut into the empty ox-shed for the sake of peace, and the house-dog was very much master of the situation.

Of the party, the two surveyors--one older and one younger--were men of refinement and education. British they were, or of such Canadian birth and training as makes a good imitation. Five of the others were evidently of humbler position--axe-men and carriers. The eighth man, who completed the party, was a young American, a singularly handsome young fellow--tall and lithe. He did not stay in the room with the others, but lounged outside by himself, leaning against the front of the house in the white cold sunlight.

In the meantime Bates, having searched the sheds and inspected with careful eyes the naked woods above the clearing, came back disconsolately by the edge of the ravine, peering into it suspiciously to see if the girl could, by some wild freak, be hiding there. When he came to the narrow strip of ground between the wall of the house and the broken bank he found himself walking knee-deep in the leaves that the last night's gale had drifted there, and because the edge of the ravine was thus entirely concealed, he, remembering Sissy's warning, kicked about the leaves cautiously to find the crack of which she had spoken, and discovered that the loose portion had already fallen. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder if the girl could possibly have fallen with it. Instantly he sprang down the ravine, feeling among the drifted leaves on all sides, but nothing except rock and earth was to be found under their light heaps. It took only a few minutes to assure him of the needlessness of his fear. The low window of the room in which Sissy had slept looked out immediately upon this drift of leaves, and, as Bates passed it, he glanced through the uncurtained glass, as if the fact that it was really empty was so hard for him to believe that it needed this additional evidence. Then the stacks of fire-wood in front of the house were all that remained to be searched, and Bates walked round, looking into the narrow aisles between them, looking at the same time down the hill, as if it might be possible that she had been on the shore and he had missed her.

"What are you looking for?" asked the young American. The question was not put rudely. There was a serenity about the youth's expectation of an answer which, proving that he had no thought of over-stepping good manners, made it, at the same time, very difficult to withhold an answer.

Bates turned annoyed. He had supposed everybody was within.

"What have you lost?" repeated the youth.

"Oh--" said Bates, prolonging the sound indefinitely. He was not deceitful or quick at invention, and it seemed to him a manifest absurdity to reply--"a girl." He approached the house, words hesitating on his lips.

"My late partner's daughter," he observed, keeping wide of the mark, "usually does the cooking."

"Married?" asked the young man rapidly.

"She?--No," said Bates, taken by surprise.

_"Young_ lady?" asked the other, with more interest. Bates was not accustomed to consider his ward under his head.

"She is just a young girl about seventeen," he replied stiffly.

"Oh, halibaloo!" cried the youth joyously. "Why, stranger, I haven't set eyes on a young lady these two months. I'd give a five dollar-bill this minute, if I had it, to set eyes on her right here and now." He took his pipe from his lips and clapped his hand upon his side with animation as he spoke.

Bates regarded him with dull disfavour. He would himself have given more than the sum mentioned to have compassed the same end, but for different reasons, and his own reasons were so grave that the youth's frivolity seemed to him doubly frivolous.

"I hope," he said coldly, "that she will come in soon." His eyes wandered involuntarily up the hill as he spoke.

"Gone out walking, has she?" The youth's eyes followed in the same direction. "Which way has she gone?"

"I don't know exactly which path she may have taken." Bates's words grew more formal the harder he felt himself pressed.

"Path!" burst out the young man--_"Macadamised road,_ don't you mean? There's about as much of one as the other on this here hill."

"I meant," said Bates, "that I didn't know where she was."

His trouble escaped somewhat with his voice as he said this with irritation.

The youth looked at him curiously, and with some incipient sympathy. After a minute's reflection he asked, touching his forehead:

"She ain't weak here, is she--like the _old_ lady?"

"Nothing of the sort," exclaimed Bates, indignantly. The bare idea cost him a pang. Until this moment he had been angry with the girl; he was still angry, but a slight modification took place. He felt with her against all possible imputations.

"All right in the headpiece, is she?" reiterated the other more lightly.

"Very intelligent," replied Bates. "I have taught her myself. She is remarkably intelligent." The young man's sensitive spirits, which had suffered slight depression from contact with Bates's perturbation, now recovered entirely.

"Oh, Glorianna!" he cried in irrepressible anticipation. "Let this very intelligent young lady come on! Why"--in an explanatory way--"if I saw as much as a female dress hanging on a clothes-line out to dry, I'm in that state of mind I'd adore it properly."

If Bates had been sure that the girl would return safely he would perhaps have been as well pleased that she should not return in time to meet the proposed adoration; as it was, he was far too ill