CHAPTER XXII.
There is nothing of which men take less heed than the infection of emotion, a thing as real as that mysterious influence which in some diseases leaps forth from one to another till all are in the same pain. With the exception, perhaps, of the infection of fear, which societies have learnt to dread by tragic experience, man still fondly supposes that his emotions are his own, that they must rise and fall within himself, and does not know that they can be taken in full tide from another and imparted again without decrease of force. May God send a healthful spirit to us all! for good or evil, we are part of one another.
There were a good many people who went up the mountain that night to find the enthusiasts, each with some purpose of interference and criticism. They went secure in their own sentiments, but with minds tickled into the belief that they were to see and hear some strange thing. They saw and heard not much, yet they did not remain wholly their own masters. Perhaps the idea that Cameron's assembly would be well worth seeing was gleaned partly from the lingering storm, for an approaching storm breeds in the mind the expectation of exciting culmination, but long before the different seekers had found the meeting place, which was only known to the loyal-hearted, the storm, having spent itself elsewhere, had passed away.
There was an open space upon a high slope of the hill. Trees stood above it, below, around—high, black masses of trees. It was here old Cameron's company had gathered together. No woodland spot, in dark, damp night, ever looked more wholly natural and of earth than this. Sophia Rexford and Alec Trenholme, after long wandering, came to the edge of this opening, and stopped the sound of their own movements that they might look and listen. They saw the small crowd assembled some way off, but could not recognise the figures or count them. Listening intently, they heard the swaying of a myriad leaves, the drip of their moisture, the trickle of rivulets that the rain had started again in troughs of summer drought, and, amidst all these, the old man's voice in accents of prayer.
Even in her feverish eagerness to seek Winifred, which had sustained her so long, Sophia chose now to skirt the edge of the wood rather than cross the open. As they went through long grass and bracken, here and there a fallen log impeded their steps. A frog, disturbed, leaped before them in the grass; they knew what it was by the sound of its falls. Soon, in spite of the rustle of their walking, they began to hear the old man's words.
It seemed that he was repeating such passages of Scripture as ascribe the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Whether these were strung together in a prayer, or whether he merely gave them forth to the night air as the poetry on which he fed his soul, they could not tell. The night was much lighter now than when the storm hung over. They saw Cameron standing on a knoll apart from his company, his face upturned to the cloudy sky. Beyond him, over the lower ranks of trees, the thunder cloud they had feared was still visible, showing its dark volume in the southern sky by the frequent fiery shudderings which flashed through its length and depth; but it had swept away so far that no sound of its thunder touched their air; and the old man looked, not at it but at the calm, cloud-wrapped sky above.
"The Son of Man is coming in the clouds of heaven with power, and great glory."
The words fell upon the silence that was made up of the subdued sounds of nature; it seemed to breathe again with them; while their minds had time to be taken captive by the imagery. Then he cried,
"He shall send His angels with a trumpet, and a great voice, and they shall gather the elect upon the four winds. Two shall be in the fields; one shall be taken and the other left." He suddenly broke off the recitation with a heartpiercing cry. "My Lord and my God! Let none of Thy children here be left. Let none of those loved ones, for whom they have come here to entreat Thee, be among those who are left. Let it suffice Thee, Lord, that these have come to meet Thee on Thy way, to ask Thee that not one of their beloved may be passed over now, when Thou comest—Now!"
The last word was insistent. And then he passed once more into the prayer that had been the burden of his heart and voice on the night that Alec had first met him. That seemed to be the one thought of his poor crazed brain—"Come, Lord Jesus!"
The little band were standing nearer the trees on the upper side of the open. They seemed to be praying. Sophia came to the end of the straggling line they formed, and there halted, doubtful. She did not advance to claim her sister; she was content to single out her childish figure as one of a nearer group. She tarried, as a worshipper who, entering church at prayer-time, waits before walking forward. Alec stood beside his unknown lady, whose servitor he felt himself to be, and looked about him with no common interest. About thirty people were clad in white; there were a few others in ordinary clothes; but it was impossible to tell just how many of these latter were there or with what intent they had come. A young man in dark clothes, who stood near the last comers peered at them very curiously: Alec saw another man sitting under a tree, and gained the impression, from his attitude, that he was suffering or perplexed. It was all paltry and pitiful outwardly, and yet, as he looked about, observing this, what he saw had no hold on his mind, which was occupied with Cameron's words; and under their influence, the scene, and the meaning of the scene, changed as his mood changed in sympathy.
A hymn began to rise. One woman's voice first breathed it; other voices mingled with hers till they were all singing. It was a simple, swaying melody in glad cadence. The tree boughs rocked with it on the lessening wind of the summer night, till, with the cumulative force of rising feeling, it seemed to expand and soar, like incense from a swinging censer, and, high and sweet, to pass, at length through the cloudy walls of the world. The music, the words, of this song had no more of art in them than the rhythmic cry of waves that ring on some long beach, or the regular pulsations of the blood that throbs audibly, telling our sudden joys. Yet, natural as it was, it was far more than any other voice of nature; for in it was the human soul, that can join itself to other souls in the search for God; and so complete was the lack of form in the yearning, that this soul came forth, as it were, unclothed, the more touching because in naked beauty.
"Soon you will see your Saviour coming,
In the air."
So they sang. This, and every line, was repeated many times. It was only by repetition that the words, with their continuity of meaning, grew in ignorant ears.
"All the thoughts of your inmost spirit
Will be laid bare,
If you love Him, He will make you
White and fair."
Then the idea of the first line was taken up again, and then again, with renewed hope and exultation in the strain.
"Hark! you may hear your Saviour coming."
It was a well-known Adventist hymn which had often roused the hearts of thousands when rung out to the air in the camp meetings of the northern States; but to those who heard it first to-night it came as the revelation of a new reality. As the unveiling of some solid marble figure would transform the thought of one who had taken it, when swathed, for a ghost or phantom, so did the heart's desire of these singers stand out now with such intensity as to give it objective existence to those who heard their song.
Into the cloud-walled heaven they all looked. It is in such moments that a man knows himself.
Old Cameron, lifting up his strong, voice again, was bewailing the sin of the world. "We sinners have not loved Thee, O Christ. We have not trusted Thy love. We have not been zealous for Thy glory. This—this is our sin. All else Thou would'st have mended in us; but this—this is our sin. Have mercy! Have mercy! Have mercy!" Long confession came from him slowly, bit by bit, as if sent forth, in involuntary cries, from a heart rent by the disappointment of waiting. In strong voice, clear and true, he made himself one with the vilest in this pleading, and all the vices with which the soul of man has degraded itself were again summed up by him in this—"We have not loved Thee. We have not trusted Thy love. We are proud and vain; we have loved ourselves, not Thee."
How common the night was—just like any other night! The clouds, as one looked at them, were seen to swing low, showing lighter and darker spaces. How very short a time can we endure the tensest mood! It is like a branding iron, which though it leaves its mark forever, cannot be borne long. The soul relaxes; the senses reclaim their share of us.
Some men came rather rudely out from under the trees, and loitered near. Perhaps all present, except Cameron, noticed them. Alec did; and felt concerning them, he knew not why, uneasy suspicion. He noticed other things now, although a few minutes before he had been insensible to all about him. He saw that the lady he waited upon had dropped her face into her hands; he saw that her disdainful and independent mood was melted. Strangely enough, his mind wandered back again to her first companion, and he wondered that she had not sent back for him or mourned his absence. He was amazed now at his own assumption that design, not accident, had caused such desertion. He could almost have started in his solicitude, to seek the missing man, such was the rebound of his mind. Yet to all this he only gave vagrant thoughts, such as we give to our fellows in church. The temple of the night had become a holy place, and his heart was heavy—perhaps for his old friend, standing there with uplifted face, perhaps on account of the words he was uttering, perhaps in contrition. In a few minutes he would go forward, and take the old preacher by the arm, and try, as he had once tried before, to lead him to rest and shelter from so vain an intensity of prayer. But just now he would wait to hear the words he said. He could not but wait, for so dull, so silent, did all things remain, that the earnestness of the expectant band made itself felt as an agony of hope waning to despair.
Absorbed in this, Alec heard what came to him as harsh profane speech; and yet it was not this; it was the really modest address of a young man who felt constrained to speak to him.
"I don't know," he said nervously (his accent was American), "who you may be, but I just wish to state that I've a sort of notion one of those fellows right down there means mischief to one of these poor ladies in white, who is his wife. I ain't very powerful myself, but, I take it, you're pretty strong, aren't you?"
Alec gave impatient assent; but the men whom he was asked to watch approached no nearer to the women but remained behind the preacher.
All this time old Cameron prayed on, and while it might be that hope in his followers was failing, in his voice there was increasing gladness and fervour.
The clouds above shifted a little. To those wrapped in true anticipation their shifting was as the first sign of a descending heaven. Somewhere behind the thick clouds there was a crescent moon, and when in the upper region of the sky a rift was made in the deep cloud cover, though she did not shine through, the sky beyond was lit by her light, and the upper edges of cloud were white as snow.
As the well of clear far light was opened to the old man's gaze, his prayer stopped suddenly, and he stood only looking upwards. They did not see so much as know from the manner in which his voice had failed, that for him, at least, there were moments of ecstasy in the assurance of hope.
"Poor fellow!" muttered Alec under his breath, for he felt the poignant disappointment of the awakening.
A sweet sound made some of them turn an instant toward the wood, for a little bird, disturbed in its hiding there, lilted forth a twittering song of joy.
Its notes had not ceased when Alec heard a gasp of terror from the lady near him, and saw, as one sees an act there is no time to avert, that one of the rough fellows who were standing behind the old man had suddenly struck him down by a savage blow upon the head.
Alec Trenholme ran and sprang upon the man who had struck the blow. Some other man, he did not see which, wrested the club from the fellow's hand. In the moments Alec was grappling with him he became conscious that the old man lying near his feet on the grass was more to him than revenge, and, with the caprice of a boy who turns from what interests him less to what interests him more, he contented himself with hurling the assailant from him, so that he fell heavily down the sloping ground to where his companions stood. Then Alec pushed others aside and lifted the wounded man.
Wounded? His hair was wet with warm blood. There was something done—a good deal done, by many people—to restore him. Alec remembered afterwards that the young man who had previously spoken to him had been active, showing a more personal solicitude than was seen in the awed kindness even of the women. One lives through such scenes with little real perception of their details. He knew at last for certain that he put his burden from him, and throwing himself down laid his ear on the broad, muscular breast. Long as he listened, there was no movement there. The mad old preacher was dead.
CHAPTER XXIII.
When Alec Trenholme rose from the dead man's side he felt his shoulder taken hold of by a familiar hand. He knew at once that it was his brother. It was quite what he would have expected, that Robert should be there; it was surely his business to come after straying sheep.
The manslayer, awed and sobered by finding what he had done, had been easily overpowered. Even his comrades helped to bind him. He was a poor creature at best, and was now in the misery that comes with sudden reaction from the exaltation of strong drink.
Alec saw that his brother was limping, that he seemed in actual pain; he was anxious to know how this was, yet he did not say so. He asked rather if Robert thought that the old man had consciously awakened from his trance of expectation, and they both, in spite of all that pressed, stooped with a lantern some one had lit to look again at the dead face. Just as he might have looked when the heavens seemed to open above him, so he looked now. They talked together, wondering who he really was, as men find words for what is easiest to say, although not relevant to the moment's necessity.
So absorbing is the interest of death to those who live in peaceful times that, now that there was a lamp, all there required to slake their curiosity by lingering gaze and comment before they would turn away. Even the prisoner, when he saw the lantern flashed near the face of the dead, demanded to be allowed to look before they led him down the hill. His poor wife, who had expected his violence to fall only on herself, kept by him, hysterically regretting that she had not been the victim.
Yet, although all this had taken place, it was only a short time before the energy of a few, acting upon the paralysed will of others, had cleared the ground. The white-dressed women crossed the open to the descending path, huddling together as they walked, their eyes perforce upon the rough ground over which they must pick their steps. There was many a rift now in the breaking clouds above them, but only a few turned an upward passionate glance. Sophia moved away in their midst. Seeing her thus surrounded, Alec did not feel that he need approach.
"I don't know who she is," he said, pointing her out to Robert. "I happened, in a queer way, to come up here with her." He paused a moment. Some sentiment such as that she was a queen among women was in his mind, but it did not rise to his lips. "She would like your help better than mine," he added. "If you will see that she and her little sister are taken care of, I will stay here"—he gave a gesture toward the corpse—"till a stretcher comes."
"I will do my best to take care of them all," Robert Trenholme answered with a sigh.
Old McNider and his little boy walked behind the women. Robert, limping as he went, lifted the sleepy child in his arms and joined himself to the company. They went under the dripping trees, down, down the dark, slippery path. The white robes hardly glimmered in the darkness. Some of the women wept; some of them held religious conversation, using such forms of expression as grow up among certain classes of pious, people and jar terribly on unaccustomed ears. Those who talked at this time had less depth of character than those who were silent, and there was evinced in their conversation a certain pride of resistance to criticism—that is, they wished to show that if what they had looked for had not come that night, their expectation of it bad been reasonable, and that their greatest hopes would shortly be realised to the confounding of unbelievers. They did not know the manner of their spirit. Few who indulge in demonstration of piety as a relief to feeling ever perceive how easily the natural passions can flow into this channel.
Jesus wished to try their faith, said they, but they would not cast away their lamps; no, they must keep them trimmed and burning. They could not live unless they felt that dear Jesus might come for them any night.
"Blessed be His holy Name!" cried one. "When He comes the world will see Him Whom they have despised, and His saints they have looked down on, too, reignin' together in glory. Yes, glory be to Jesus, there'll be a turnin' of the tables soon."
To Trenholme it seemed that they bandied about the sacred name. He winced each time.
One woman, with more active intellect than some of the rest, began to dilate on the signs already in the world which proved the Second Advent was near. Her tone was not one of exulted feeling, but of calm reason. Her desire was evidently to strengthen her sisters who might be cast down. In her view all the ages of the history of the vast human race were seen in the natural perspective which makes things that are near loom larger than all that is far. The world, she affirmed, was more evil than it had ever been. In the Church there was such spiritual death as never before. The few great revivals there were showed that now the poor were being bidden from the highways to the marriage feast. And above all else, it was now proved that the coming of the Lord was nigh, because bands of the elect everywhere were watching and waiting for the great event. Her speech was well put forth in the midst of the weary descent. She did not say more than was needed. If there were drooping hearts among her friends they were probably cheered.
Then some more emotional talkers took up the exultant strain again. It was hard for Trenholme not to estimate the inner hearts of all these women by the words that he heard, and therefore to attribute all the grace of the midnight hour to the dead.
When they got to the bottom of the hill, the farmer, at the request of men who had gone first, had another waggon in readiness to take home the women who had come to the hill on foot or who had sent away their vehicles. Many of them did not belong to the village of Chellaston. It was evidently better that the lighter waggon which had come from Chellaston should go round now to the outlying farms, and that all the villagers should return in that provided by the farmer. Trenholme put in the child, who was now sleeping, and helped in the women, one by one. Their white skirts were wet and soiled; he felt this as he aided them to dispose them on the straw which had been put in for warmth. The farmer, an Englishman, made some wise, and not uncivil, observations upon the expediency of remaining at home at dead of night as compared with ascending hills in white frocks. He was a kind man, but his words made Winifred's tears flow afresh. She shrank behind the rest. Trenholme kissed her little cold hand when he had put her in. Then, last of all, he helped Sophia.
She had no words ready now to offer him by which to make amends. "You have hurt your foot?" she said.
He told her briefly that his foot had twisted under him, so that at first he had not been able to come on for the sprain, and he clasped her hand as he bade the waggon drive on.
Feeling the lack of apology on her own part she thought he had shown himself the greater, in that he had evidently pardoned her without it.
He did not feel himself to be great.
The cart jolted away. Trenholme stood in the farmyard. The light of a lantern made a little flare about the stable door. The black, huge barns, around seemed to his weary sense oppressive in their nearness. The waggon disappeared down the dark lane. The farmer talked more roughly, now that kindness no longer restrained him, of the night's event. Trenholme leaned against a white-washed wall, silent but not listening. He almost wondered he did not faint with the pain in his ankle; the long strain he had put upon the hurt muscle rendered it almost agonising, but faintness did not come: it seldom does to those who sigh for it, as for the wings of a dove, that they may go far away with it and be at rest. The farmer shut the stable door, put out the light, and Trenholme limped out the house with him to wait for his brother.
CHAPTER XXIV.
All this time Alec was walking, like a sentry, up and down beside the old man's corpse. He was not alone. When the others had gone he found that the young American had remained with him. He came back from the lower trees whence he had watched the party disappear.
"Come to think of it," he said, "I'll keep you company."
Something in his manner convinced Alec that this was no second thought; he had had no intention of leaving. He was a slight fellow, and, apparently too tired now to wish to stand or walk longer, he looked about him for a seat. None offered in the close vicinity of the corpse and Alec, its sentinel; but, equal to his own necessity, he took a newspaper from his pocket, folded it into a small square, laid it on the wet beaten grass, and sat thereon, arching his knees till only the soles of his boots touched the ground. To Alec's eye his long, 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 very respectable show of sabbath-keeping. The hotel shared in the sabbath quiet, especially in the afternoon, when most people were resting in their rooms.
About three o'clock Eliza was ready to go to her room on the third story to dress for the afternoon. This process was that day important, for she put on a new black silk gown. It was beflounced and befrilled according to the fashion of the time. When she had arranged it to a nicety in her own room, she descended to one of the parlours to survey herself in the pier-glass. No one was there. The six red velvet chairs and the uniform sofa stood in perfect order round the room. The table, with figured cloth, had a large black Bible on it as usual. On either side of the long looking-glass was a window, in which the light of day was somewhat dulled by coarse lace curtains. Abundance of light there was, however, for Eliza's purpose. She shut the door, and pushed aside the table which held the Bible, the better to show herself to herself in the looking-glass.
Eliza faced herself. She turned and looked at herself over one shoulder; then she looked over the other shoulder. As she did so, the curving column of her white neck was a thing a painter might have desired to look at, had he been able to take his eyes from the changeful sheen on her glossy red hair. But there was no painter there, and Eliza was looking at the gown. She walked to the end of the room, looking backward over her shoulder. She walked up the room toward the mirror, observing the moving folds of the skirt as she walked. She went aside, out of the range of the glass, and came into it again to observe the effect of meeting herself as though by chance, or rather, of meeting a young woman habited in such a black silk gown, for it was not in herself precisely that Eliza was at the moment interested. She did not smile at herself, or meet her own eyes in the glass. She was gravely intent upon looking as well as she could, not upon estimating how well she looked.
The examination was satisfactory. Perhaps a woman more habituated to silk gowns and mantua-makers would have found small wrinkles in sleeve or shoulder; but Eliza was pleased. If the gown was not perfect, it was as good a one as she was in the habit of seeing, even upon gala occasions. And she had no intention of keeping her gown for occasions; her intention was that it should be associated with her in the ordinary mind of the place. Now that she was fortunate enough to possess silk (and she was determined this should only be the forerunner of a succession of such gowns) people should think of her as Miss White, who wore silk in the afternoons. She settled this as she saw how well the material became her. Then, with grave care, she arranged a veil round the black bonnet she wore, and stood putting on new gloves preparatory to leaving the room. Eliza was not very imaginative; but had she been disposed to foresee events, much as she might have harassed herself, she would not have been more likely to hit upon the form to be taken by the retributive fate she always vaguely feared than are the poor creatures enslaved by fearful imaginations.
The door opened, and Harkness thrust his handsome head into the room. He was evidently looking for her. When he saw her he came in hastily, shutting the door and standing with his back to it, as if he did not care to enter further.
Eliza had not seen him that day. After what had happened, she rather dreaded the next interview, as she did not know what he might find to say; but the instant she saw him, she perceived that it was something more decisive than he had ever shown sign of before. He looked tired, and at the same time as if his spirit was upwrought within him and his will set to some purpose.
"I'm real glad to see you," he said, but not pleasantly. "I've been looking for you; and it's just as well for you I found you without more ado."
"I'm just going out," said Eliza; "I can't stay now."
"You'll just stop a bit where you are, and hear what I'm going to say."
"I can't," said she, angrily; but he was at the door, and she made no movement towards it.
He talked right on. "I'm going away," he said. "I've packed up all that I possess here in this place, and I'm going to depart by this afternoon's train. No one much knows of this intention. I take it you won't interfere, so I don't mind confiding my design to your kind and sympathetic breast."
The emphasis he laid on the eulogy was evidently intended for bitter sarcasm. Anger gave her unwonted glibness.
"I'll ask you to be good enough to pay our bill, then. If you're making off because you can't pay your other debts it's no affair of mine."
He bowed mockingly. "You are real kind. Can't think how much obliged I am for your tactful reminder; but it don't happen to be my financial affairs that I came to introdooce to your notice." He stammered a moment, as if carried rather out of his bearings by his own loquacity. "It's—it's rather your finances that I wish to enlarge upon."
She opposed herself to him in cold silence that would not betray a gleam of curiosity.
"You're a mighty fine young lady, upon my word!" he observed, running his eye visibly over her apparel. "Able to work for yourself, and buy silk skirts, and owning half a bit of ground that people are beginning to think will be worth something considerable when they get to mining there. Oh, you're a fine one—what with your qualities and your fortune!"
A sudden unbecoming colour came with tell-tale vehemence over her cheek and brow.
"Your qualities of mind, as I've remarked, are fine; but the qualities of your heart, my dear, are finer still. I've been making love to you, with the choicest store of loving arts, for eight long months; and the first blush I've been enabled to raise on your lovely countenance is when I tell you you've more money than you looked for! You're a tender-hearted young lady!"
"The only train I ever heard of on Sunday afternoon goes pretty soon," she said; and yet there was now an eager look of curiosity in her eyes that belied her words.
He took no notice of her warning, but resumed now with mock apology. "But I'm afraid I'm mistaken in the identity. Sorry to disappoint you, but the estate I allude to belongs to Miss Cameron, who lived near a locality called Turrifs Station. Beg pardon, forgot for the moment your name was White, and that you know nothing about that interesting and historic spot."
Perhaps because she had played the part of indifference so long, it seemed easiest to her, even in her present confusion of mind; at any rate she remained silent.
"Pity you weren't her, isn't it?" He showed all his white teeth. He had been pale at first, but in talking the fine dark red took its wonted place in his cheeks. He had tossed back his loose smoke-coloured hair with a nervous hand. His dark beauty never showed to better advantage as he stood leaning back on the door. "Pity you aren't her, isn't it?" he repeated, smilingly.
She had no statuesque pose, but she had assumed a look of insensibility almost equal to that of stone.
"Come to think of it, even if you were her, you'd find it hard to say so now; so, either way, I reckon you'll have to do without the tin. 'Twould be real awkward to say to all your respectable friends that you'd been sailing under false colours; that 'White' isn't your bona fide cognomen; that you'd deserted a helpless old woman to come away; and as to how you left your home—the sort of carriage you took to, my dear, and how you got over the waggoner to do the work of a sexton—Oh, my, fine tale for Chellaston, that! No, my dear young lady, take a fatherly word of admonition; your best plan is to make yourself easy without the tin."
He looked at her, even now, with more curiosity than malice in his smiling face. A power of complete reserve was so foreign to his own nature that without absolute proof he could not entirely believe it in her. The words he was speaking might have been the utter nonsense to her that they would have been to any but the girl who was lost from the Bates and Cameron clearing for all hint she gave of understanding. He worked on his supposition, however. He had all the talking to himself.
"You're mighty secret! Now, look at me. I'm no saint, and I've come here to make a clean breast of that fact. When I was born, Uncle Sam said to me, 'Cyril P. Harkness, you're a son of mine, and it's your vocation to worship the God of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Almighty Dollar'; and I piped up, 'Right you are, uncle.' I was only a baby then." He added these last words reflectively, as if pondering on the reminiscence, and gained the object of his foolery—that she spoke.
"If you mean to tell me that you're fond of money, that's no news. I've had sense to see that. If you thought I'd a mine belonging to me somewhere that accounts for the affection you've been talking of so much. I begin to believe in it now."
She meant her words to be very cutting, but she had not much mobility of voice or glance; and moreover, her heart was like lead within her; her words fell heavily.
"Just so," said he, bowing as if to compliment her discrimination. "You may believe me, for I'm just explaining to you I'm not a saint, and that is a sentiment you may almost always take stock in when expressed by human lips. I was real sick last summer; and when I came to want a holiday I thought I'd do it cheap, so when I got wind of a walking party—a set of gentlemen who were surveying—I got them to let me go along. Camp follower I was, and 'twas first rate fun, especially as I was on the scent of what they were looking for. So then we came on asbestos in one part. Don't know what that is, my dear? Never mind as to its chemical proportions; there's dollars in it. Then we dropped down on the house of the gentleman that owned about half the hill. One of them was just dead, and he had a daughter, but she was lost, and as I was always mighty fond of young ladies, I looked for her. Oh, you may believe, I looked, till, when she was nowhere, I half thought the man who said she was lost had been fooling. Well, then, I—" (he stopped and drawled teasingly) "But possibly I intrude. Do you hanker after hearing the remainder of this history?"
She had sat down by the centre table with her back to him.
"You can go on," she muttered.
"Thanks for your kind permission. I haven't got much more to tell, for I don't know to this mortal minute whether I've ever found that young lady or not; but I have my suspicions. Any way, that day away we went across the lake, and when the snow drove us down from the hills the day after, the folks near the railroad were all in a stew about the remains of Bates's partner, the poppa of the young lady. His remains, having come there for burial, and not appearing to like the idea, had taken the liberty of stepping out on the edge of the evening, and hooking it. So said I, 'What if that young lady was real enterprising! what if she got the waggoner to put her poppa under the soil of the forest, and rode on herself, grand as you please, in his burial casket!' (That poor waggoner drank himself to death of remorse, but that was nothing to her.) The circumstances were confusing, and the accounts given by different folks were confusing, and, what's more, 'tisn't easy to believe in a sweet girl having her poppa buried quite secret; most young ladies is too delicate. Still, after a bit, the opinion I've mentioned did become my view of the situation; and I said to myself 'Cyril, good dog; here's your vocation quite handy. Find the young lady, find her, good fellow! Ingratiate yourself in her eyes, and you've got, not only an asbestos mine, but a wife of such smartness and enterprise as rarely falls to the lot of a rising young man.' I didn't blame her one bit for the part she had taken, for I'd seen the beast she'd have had to live with. No doubt her action was the properest she could take. And I thought if I came on her panting, flying, and offered her my protection, she'd fall down and adore me. So, to make a long tale short, I stopped a bit in that locality, hunting for her quite private after every one else had given up hunting. I heard of a daft old man who'd got about, the Lord only knows how, and I set the folks firmly believing that he was old Cameron. Well, if he was, then the girl was lost and dead; but if he wasn't—well, I twigged it she'd got on the railroad, and, by being real pleasant to all the car men, I found out, quite by the way and private, how she might have got on, and where any girl had got off, till by patience and perseverance I got on your track; and I've been eight months trying to fathom your deepness and win your affections. The more fool I! For to try to win what hasn't any more existence than the pot at the rainbow's tail is clear waste of time. Deep you are; but you haven't got any of the commodity of affection in your breast."
"Why didn't you tell me this before, like an honest man?" she asked; "and I'd have told you you didn't know as much as you thought you did." Her voice was a little thick; but it was expressionless.
"I'm not green. If you'd known you were possessed of money, d'you suppose you'd have stayed here to marry me? Oh no, I meant to get that little ceremony over first, and spring the mine on you for a wedding present after. The reason I've told you now is that I wouldn't marry you now, not if you'd ten millions of dollars in cash in your pocket."
"Why not? If I'm the person you take me for, I'm as rich and clever now." She still sat with her back to him; her voice so impassive that even interrogation was hardly expressed in words that had the form of a question.
"Yes, and you'd be richer and cleverer now with me, by a long chalk, than without me! If you'd me to say who you are, and that I'd known it all along, and how you'd got here, and to bring up the railroad fellows (I've got all their names) who noticed you to bear witness, your claim would look better in the eyes of the law. 'Twould look a deal better in the eyes of the world, too, to come as Mrs. Cyril P. Harkness, saying you had been Miss Cameron, than to come on the stage as Miss White, laying claim to another name; and it would be a long sight more comfortable to have me to support and cherish you at such a time than not to have a friend in the world except the folks whose eyes you've pulled the wool over, and who'll be mighty shocked. Oh, yes; by Jemima! you'd be richer and cleverer now with me than without me. But I'll tell you what I've come here to say"—his manner took a tone more serious; his mocking smile passed away; he seemed to pause to arrest his own lightness, and put on an unwonted dignity. "I tell you," he repeated slowly, "what I've come here to say—I do despise a young lady without a heart. Do you know what occurred last night? As good an old gentleman as ever lived was brutally felled to the earth and killed; a poor man who was never worse than a drunkard has become a murderer, and there's a many good pious ladies in this town who'll go about till death's day jeered at as fools. Would you like to be marked for a fool? No, you wouldn't and neither will they; and if you're the young lady I take you for, you could have hindered all this, and you didn't. I brought the old man to this place; I am to blame in that, my own self, I am; but I tell you, by the salvation of my soul, when I stood last night and heard him pray, and saw those poor ladies with their white garbs all bedraggled, around him praying, I said to myself, 'Cyril, you've reason to call on the rocks and hills to cover you,' and I had grace to be right down sorry. I'm right down ashamed, and so I'm going to pull up stakes and go back to where I came from; and I've come here now to tell you that after what I've seen of you in this matter I'd sooner die than be hitched with you. You've no more heart than my old shoe; as long as you get on it's all one to you who goes to the devil. You're not only as sharp as I took you for, but a good deal sharper. Go ahead; you'll get rich somehow; you'll get grand; but I want you to know that, though I'm pretty tricky myself, and 'cute enough to have thought of a good thing and followed it up pretty far, I've got a heart; and I do despise a person made of stone. I was real fond of you, for you far exceeded my expectations; but I'm not fond of you now one bit. If you was to go down on your bended knees and ask me to admire you now, I wouldn't."
She listened to all the sentence he pronounced upon her. When he had finished she asked a question. "What do you mean about going to law about the clearin'?"
"Your worthy friend, Mr. Bates, has arrived in this place this very day.
He's located with the Principal, he is."
"He isn't here," she replied in angry scorn.
"All right. Just as you please."
"He isn't here," she said more sulkily.
"But he is."
She ignored his replies. "What do you mean about going to law about the land?"
"Why, I haven't got much time left,"—he was standing now with his watch in his hand—"but for the sake of old times I'll tell you, if you don't see through that. D'you suppose Bates isn't long-headed! He's heard about Father Cameron being here, and knowing the old man couldn't give an account of himself, he's come to see him and pretend he's your father. Of course he's no notion of you being here. He swears right and left that you went over the hills and perished in the snow; and he's got up great mourning and lamenting, so I've heard, for your death. Oh, Jemima! Can't you see through that?"
"Tell me what you mean," she demanded, haughtily. She was standing again now.
"Why, my dear, if you knew a bit more of the world you'd know that it meant that he intends to pocket all the money himself. And, what's more, he's got the best of the situation; for you left him of your own accord, my dear, and changed your name, and if you should surprise him now by putting in an appearance and saying you're the lost young lady, what's to hinder him saying you're not you, and keeping the tin? I don't know who's to swear to you, myself. The men round Turrifs said you were growing so fast that between one time and another they wouldn't know you. Worst, that is, of living in out-of-the-way parts—no one sees you often enough to know if you're you or if you're not you."
"It is not true," she cried. He had at last brought the flash to her eyes. She stood before him palpitating with passion. "You are a liar!" she said, intensely. "Mr. Bates is as honest as"—words failed her—"as—as honest and as good as you don't even know how to think of."
He was like a necromancer who, although triumphant at having truly raised a spirit by his incantations, quails mystified before it.
"Oh well, since you feel so badly about it I'll not say that you mayn't outwit him if you put in your claim. You needn't give up all for lost if he does try to face it out."
"Give up what for lost? Do you think I care about this old mine so much? I tell you, sooner than hear a tricky sharper like you say that Mr. Bates is as cunning as you are, I'd—I'd—" She did not say more, but she trembled with passion. "Go!" she concluded. "If you say I'm unfeeling, you say a thing I suppose is true enough; but you've said things to me this afternoon that are not true; and if there's a good honest man in this world, it's Mr. Bates. Sooner than not believe that I'd—sooner die."
The tears had welled up and overflowed her eyes. Her face was red and burning.
"Say, Eliza," he said, gently enough. He was more astonished than he could realise or express, but he was really troubled to see her cry.
"Oh, don't 'Eliza' me!" she cried, angrily. "You said you were going to go—go—go—I tell you, go! What business is it of yours, I'd like to know, to mention Mr. Bates to me? You've no business with either him or me."
"Upon my word! I'll take my gospel oath I've said no more than I do believe."
"I dare say not. You don't know what an honest man is, so how could you believe in one?"
"I've a real soft heart; I hate to see you cry, Eliza."
"Well, Mr. Bates hasn't a soft heart at all; he's as unkind as can be; but he's as much above you, with all your softness, as light is above boot blacking."
She was not good-looking in her tears. She was not modest in her anger; all the crude rude elements of her nature broke forth. She wrenched the door open although with obstinate strength he tried to keep it shut, desiring stupidly to comfort her. She cast him aside as a rough man might push a boy. When she was making her way upstairs he heard smothered sounds of grief and rage escaping from her.
CHAPTER II.
When Eliza had been in her own room for about half an hour, her passion had subsided. She was not glad of this; in perverseness she would have recalled the tempest if she could, but she knew not what to call back or how to call. She knew no more what had disturbed her than in times of earthquake the sea water knows the cause of its unwonted surging. She sat angry and miserable; angry with Harkness, not because he had called her heartless—she did not care in the slightest for his praise or blame—but because he had been the bearer of ill tidings; and because he had in some way produced in her the physical and mental distress of angry passion, a distress felt more when passion is subsiding. She ranked it as ill tidings that her father's land had risen in value. She would rather that her worldly wisdom in leaving it had been proved by subsequent events than disproved, as now, by news which raised such a golden possibility before her ignorant eyes, that her heart was rent with pangs of envy and covetousness, while her pride warred at the very thought of stooping to take back what she had cast away, and all the disclosure that must ensue. Above all, she counted it ill tidings that Bates was reported to be in the place. She was as angry with him now as on the day she had left him—more angry—for now he could vaunt new prosperity as an additional reason why she had been wrong to go. Why had he come here to disturb and interrupt? What did the story about Father Cameron matter to him? She felt like a hunted stag at bay; she only desired strength and opportunity to trample the hunter.
Partly because she felt more able to deal with others than with the dull angry misery of her own heart, partly because she was a creature of custom, disliking to turn from what she had set out to do, she found herself, after about an hour of solitude, rearranging her street toilet to walk to Mrs. Rexford's house.
When she had made her way down to the lower flat of the hotel she found Harkness had spoken the truth in saying he intended to go, for he was gone. The men in the cool shaded bar-room were talking about it. Mr. Hutchins mentioned it to her through the door. He sat in his big chair, his crutches leaning against him.
"Packed up; paid his bill; gone clear off—did you know?"
"Yes, I knew," said Eliza, although she had not known till that moment.
"Said he was so cut up, and that he wouldn't stay to give evidence against poor Job, or be hauled before the coroner to be cross-questioned about the old man. He's a sharp 'un; packed up in less time than it takes most men to turn round—adjustable chair and all."
Eliza had come to the threshold of the bar-room door to hear all he said. The sunshine of a perfect summer day fell on the verandah just outside, and light airs came through the outer door and fanned her, but in here the sweet air was tarnished with smoke from the cigars of one or two loiterers.
Two men of the village were sitting with their hats on. As they said "Good-day" to Eliza, they did not rise or take off their hats, not because they did not feel towards her as a man would who would give this civility, but because they were not in the habit of expressing their feelings in that way. Another transient caller was old Dr. Nash, and he, looking at Eliza, recognised in a dull way something in her appearance which made him think her a finer woman than he had formerly supposed, and, pulling off his hat, he made her a stiff bow.
Eliza spoke only to Mr. Hutchins: "I shall be gone about four hours; I am going to the Rexfords to tea. You'd better look into the dining-room once or twice when supper's on."
"All right," said he, adding, when the clock had had time to tick once,
"Miss White."
And the reason he affixed her name to his promise was the same that had compelled Dr. Nash's bow—a sense of her importance growing upon him; but the hotel-keeper observed, what the old doctor did not, that the gown was silk.
"Fine woman that, sir," he remarked, when she was gone, to anyone who might wish to receive the statement.
"Well," said one of the men, "I should just think it."
"She seems," said Dr. Nash, stiffly, "to be a good girl and a clever one."
"She isn't just now what I'd call a gurl," said the man who had answered first. "She's young, I know; but now, if you see her walking about the dining-room, she's more like a queen than a gurl."
Without inquiring into the nature of this distinction Dr. Nash got into his buggy. As he drove down the street under the arching elm trees he soon passed Eliza on her way to the Rexfords, and again he lifted his hat. Eliza, with grave propriety, returned the salutation.
The big hawthorn tree at the beginning of Captain Rexford's fence was thickly bedecked with pale scarlet haws. Eliza opened the gate beside it and turned up the cart road, walking on its grassy edge, concealed from the house by ragged lilac trees. She preferred this to-day to the open path leading to the central door. This road brought her to the end of the long front verandah. Here she perceived voices from the sitting-room, and, listening, thought she heard Principal Trenholme talking. She went on past the gable of the house into the yard, a sloping straggling bit of ground, enclosed on three sides by the house and its additions of dairies and stables, and on the fourth side bounded by the river. For once the place seemed deserted by the children. A birch, the only tree in the enclosure, cast fluttering shadow on the closely cropped sod. Sunlight sparkled on the river and on the row of tin milk pans set out near the kitchen door. To this door Eliza went slowly, fanning herself with her handkerchief, for the walk had been warm. She saw Miss Rexford was in the kitchen alone, attending to some light cookery.
"I heard company in the front room, so I came round here till they were gone."
"You are not usually shy," said Sophia.
Eliza sat down on a chair by the wall. With the door wide open the yard seemed a part of the kitchen. It was a pleasant place. The birch tree flicked its shadow as far as the much-worn wooden doorstep.
"I was very sorry to hear about last night, Miss Sophia," said Eliza, sincerely, meaning that she was sorry on Winifred's account more immediately.
"Yes," said Sophia, acknowledging that there was reason for such sympathy.
"Is that Principal Trenholme talking?" asked Eliza. The talk in the sitting-room came through the loose door, and a doubt suddenly occurred to her.
"No; it's his brother," said Sophia.
"The voices are alike."
"Yes; but the two men don't seem to be much alike."
"I didn't know he had a brother."
"Didn't you? He has just come."
Sophia was taking tea-cakes from the oven. Eliza leaned her head against the wall; she felt warm and oppressed. One of the smaller children opened the sitting-room door just then and came into the kitchen. The child wore a very clean pinafore in token of the day. She came and sat on Eliza's knee. The door was left ajar; instead of stray words and unintelligible sentences, all the talk of the sitting-room was now the common property of those in the kitchen.
In beginning to hear a conversation already in full flow, it is a few moments before the interchange of remarks and interrogations makes sense to us. Eliza only came to understand what was being talked of when the visitor said "No, I'm afraid there's no doubt about the poor girl's death. After there had been two or three snow-storms there was evidently no use in looking for her any more; but even then, I think it was months before he gave up hopes of her return. Night after night he used to hoist a pinewood torch, thinking she might have fallen in with Indians and be still alive and trying to make her way back. The fact of the matter was, Mrs. Rexford, Bates loved her, and he simply could not give her up for dead."
The young man had as many emphasised words in his speech as a girl might have had, yet his talk did not give the impression of easily expressed feeling.
"Ah, it was very sad."
"Yes, I didn't know I could have minded so much a thing that did not affect me personally. Then when he had given up hope of finding her living, he was off, when the spring came, everywhere over the woods, supposing that if she had perished, her body could be found when the snow was gone. I couldn't help helping him to search the place for miles round. It's a fine place in spring, too; but I don't know when one cares less about spring flowers than when one's half expecting the dead body of a girl to turn up in every hollow where they grow thickest. I've beaten down a whole valley of trillium lilies just to be sure she had not fallen between the rocks they grew on. And if I felt that way, you may suppose it was bad enough for Bates."
"He seems to have had a feeling heart."
"Oh well, he had brought the girl up. I don't think he cared for anything in the world but her."
"And Dr. Nash saw Mr. Bates as soon as you got him to your brother's? If Dr. Nash thinks he'll pull through I should think you must feel hopeful."
"Yes—well, I left him on the sofa. He's rather bad."
There was a pause, as if Mrs. Rexford might be sighing and shaking her head over some suffering before described.
Sophia had gone to the milk cellar to get cream for tea. Eliza followed her out into the yard.
"I had better not stay to tea," said she, "there won't be room."
"Oh yes, there will; I have a headache, so I'm not going into the dining-room."
"Then I won't stay. I would rather come some night when you are there."
"How handsome your dress looks! You are getting quite a fine lady,
Eliza."
"My dress!" said Eliza, looking down at it. It seemed to her so long since she thought of it. "Yes," she continued, stroking it, "it looks very nicely, doesn't it?"
Sophia assented heartily. She liked the girl's choice of clothes; they seemed to remove her from, and set her far above, the commoner people who frequented the hotel.
"You're very tired, Miss Sophia, I can see; and it's no wonder after last night. It's no fun staying to-night, for we all feel dull about what's happened; I'll go now."
Eliza went quietly down the lane again, in shadow of the lilac hedge, and let herself out of the wooden gate; but she did not return to the village. She looked down the road the other way, measuring with her eyes the distance to the roof of Trenholme's house. She walked in that direction, and when she came to Captain Rexford's pasture field, she got through the bars and crossed it to a small wood that lay behind. Long golden strips of light lay athwart the grass between elongated shades cast by cows and bushes. The sabbath quiet was everywhere. All the cows in the pasture came towards her, for it was milking time, and any one who came suggested to them the luxury of that process. Some followed her in slow and dubious fashion; some stopped before her on the path. Eliza did not even look at them, and when she went in among the young fir trees they left her alone.
It was not a thick wood; the evening sun shone freely between the clumps of young spruce. In an open glade an elm tree stood, stretching out branches sensitive to each breath of air, golden in the slant sunlight above the low dark firs. The roots of this tree were raised and dry. Eliza sat down on them. She could see between the young trees out to the side of the college houses and their exit to the road. She could see the road too: it was this she watched.