CHAPTER III.
Eliza sat still in her rough woodland chamber till the stray sunbeams had left its floor of moss and played only through the high open windows in the elm bough roof. She had seen the cows milked, and now heard the church bells ring. She looked intently through the fissures of the spruce shrub walls till at length she saw a light carriage drive away from the college grounds with the clergyman and his brother in it. She knew now that their house would be left almost empty. After waiting till the last church-going gig had passed on the road and the bells had stopped, she went into the college grounds by a back way, and on to the front of Trenholme's house.
As was common in the place, the front door yielded when the handle was turned. Eliza had no wish to summon the housekeeper. She stood in the inner hall and listened, that she might hear what rooms had inmates. From the kitchen came occasional clinking of cups and plates; the housekeeper had evidently not swerved from her regular work. With ears preternaturally acute, Eliza hearkened to the silence in the other rooms till some slight sound, she could hardly tell of what, led her upstairs to a certain door. She did not knock; she had no power to stand there waiting for a response; the primitive manners of the log house in which she had lived so long were upon her. She entered the room abruptly, roughly, as she would have entered the log house door.
In a long chair lay the man she sought. He was dressed in common ill-fitting clothes; he lay as only the very weak lie, head and limbs visibly resting on the support beneath them.
She crossed her arms and stood there, fierce and defiant. She was conscious of the dignity of her pose, of her improved appearance and of her fine clothes; the consciousness formed part of her defiance. But he did not even see her mood, just as, manlike, he did not see her dress. All that he did see was that here, in actual life before him, was the girl he had lost. In his weakness he bestirred himself with a cry of fond wondering joy—"Sissy!"
"Yes, Mr. Bates, I'm here."
Some power came to him, for he sat erect, awed and reverent before this sudden delight that his eyes were drinking in. "Are you safe, Sissy?" he whispered.
"Yes," she replied, scornfully, "I've been quite safe ever since I got away from you, Mr. Bates. I've taken care of myself, so I'm quite safe and getting on finely; but I'd get on better if my feet weren't tied in a sack because of the things you made me do—you made me do it, you know you did." She challenged his self-conviction with fierce intensity. "It was you made me go off and leave your aunt before you'd got any one else to take care of her; it was you who made me take her money because you'd give me none that was lawfully my own; it was you that made me run away in a way that wouldn't seem very nice if any one knew, and do things they wouldn't think very nice, and—and" (she was incoherent in her passion) "you made me run out in the woods alone, till I could get a train, and I was so frightened of you coming, and finding me, and telling, that I had to give another name; and now, when I'm getting on in the world, I have to keep hiding all this at every turn because people wouldn't think it very pretty conduct. They'd think it was queer and get up a grand talk. So I've told lies and changed my name, and it's you that made me, Mr. Bates."
He only took in a small part of the meaning of the words she poured upon him so quickly, but he could no longer be oblivious to her rage. His joy in seeing her did not subside; he was panting for breath with the excitement of it, and his eyes gloated upon her; for his delight in her life and safety was something wholly apart from any thought of himself, from the pain her renewed anger must now add to the long-accustomed pain of his own contrition.
"But how," he whispered, wondering, "how did you get over the hills?
How?—"
"Just how and when I could. 'Twasn't much choice that you left me, Mr. Bates. It signifies very little now how I got here. I am here. You've come after the old man that's dead, I suppose. You might have saved yourself the trouble. He isn't father, if that's what you thought."
He did not even hear the last part of her speech. He grasped at the breath that seemed trying to elude him.
"You went out into the woods alone," he said, pityingly. He was so accustomed to give her pity for this that it came easily. "You—you mean over our hills to the back of the—"
"No, I don't, I wasn't such a silly as to go and die in the hills. I got across the lake, and I'm here now—that's the main thing, and I want to know why you're here, and what you're going to do."
Her tone was brutal. It was, though he could not know it, the half hysterical reaction from that mysterious burst of feeling that had made her defend him so fiercely against the American's evil imputation.
She was not sufficiently accustomed to ill health to have a quick eye for it; but she began now to see how very ill he looked. The hair upon his face and head was damp and matted; his face was sunken, weather-browned, but bloodless in the colouring. His body seemed struggling for breath without aid from his will, for she saw he was thinking only of her. His intense preoccupation in her half fascinated, half discomforted her, the more so because of the feverish lustre of his eye.
"I'm sorry you're so ill, Mr. Bates," she said, coldly; "you'd better lie down."
"Never mind about me," he whispered, eagerly, and feebly moved upon the seat to get a little nearer her. "Never mind about me; but tell me, Sissy, have you been a good girl since you got off like this? You're safe and well—have you been good?"
"I took your aunt's money, if you mean that, but I left you my half of things for it; and anyway, it was you who made me do it."
"Yes, yes," he assented, "'twas my doing; the sin of all you did then lies at my door. But since then, Sissy?" His look, his whole attitude, were an eager question, but she looked at him scornfully.
"Of course I've been good. I go to church and say my prayers, and every one respects me. I worked first in a family, but I didn't let them call me a servant. Then I got a place in the Grand Hotel. Old Mr. Hutchins had got lame, so he couldn't see after things, and I could. I've done it now for six months, and it's a different house. I always do everything I do well, so we've made money this summer. I'm thinking of making Mr. Hutchins take me into partnership; he'd rather do it than lose me. I'm well thought of, Mr. Bates, by everybody, and I'm going to get rich."
"Rich," he echoed, quietly. He looked now, his mind drawn by hers, at her fine clothes, and at the luxuriant red hair that was arranged with artificial display. The painfulness of his breath and his weakness returned now within his range of feeling.
Without having expected to absorb his mind or knowing that she cared to do so, she still felt that instant that something was lost to her. The whole stream of his life, that had been hers since she had entered the room, was no longer all for her. She pressed on quietly to the business she had with him, fearing to lose a further chance.
"Look here, Mr. Bates! It's not more than a few hours since I heard you were here, so I've come to tell you that I'm alive and all right, and all that I've done that wasn't very nice was your fault; but, look here, I've something else to say: I don't know why you've come here to see this old preacher, or who he is, or what you have to do with him; but it would be cruel and mean of you now, after driving me to do what I did, to tell the people here about it, and that my name isn't White, you know. I've very nice friends here, who'd be shocked, and it would do me harm. I'm not going to accuse you to people of what you've done. I'm sorry you're ill, and that you've had all the trouble of hunting for me, and all that; but I've come to ask you now to keep quiet and not say who I am."
He drew great sighs, as a wounded animal draws its breath, but he was not noticing the physical pain of breathing. He did not catch at breath as eagerly as he was trying to catch at this new idea, this new Sissy, with a character and history so different from what he had supposed. His was not a mind that took rational account of the differences between characters, yet he began to realise now that the girl who had made her own way, as this one had, was not the same as the girl he had imagined wandering helplessly among pathless hills, and dying feebly there.
She still looked at him as if demanding an answer to her request, looked at him curiously too, trying to estimate how ill he was. He did not speak, and she, although she did not at all fathom his feeling, knew instinctively that some influence she had had over him was lessened.
"Of course you can spoil my life if you like, Mr. Bates, but I've come to ask you not. Someone's told me there's a mine found on our clearin'—well, when I took your aunt's gold pieces I meant to leave you the land for them. I'm too proud to go back on that now, far too proud; you can keep the money if you want to, or you can give me some of it if you want to. I'd like to be rich better than anything, but I'd rather be poor as a church mouse, and free to get on my own way, than have you to say what I ought to do every touch and turn, thinking I'd only be good and sensible so long as I did what you told me" (there was derision in her voice). "But now, as I say, you have the chance to make me miserable if you choose; but I've come to ask you not to, although if you do, I dare say I can live it down."
He looked at her bewildered. A few moments since and all the joy bells of his life had been a-chime; they were still ringing, but jangling confusedly out of tune, and—now she was asking him to conceal the cause of his joy, that he had found her. He could not understand fully; his mind would not clear itself.
"I won't do anything to make you miserable, Sissy," he said, faintly.
"You won't tell that you've seen me, or who I am, or anything?" she insisted, half pleading, half threatening.
He turned his face from her to hide the ghastly faintness that was coming over him. "I—I oughtn't to have tried to keep you, when I did," he said.
"No, you oughtn't to," she assented, quickly.
"And I won't speak of you now, if that's what you want."
"Thank you," she said, wondering what had made him turn his back to her.
"You aren't very ill, are you, Mr. Bates?"
"No—you—I only can't get my breath. You'd better go, perhaps."
"Yes, I think I had," she replied.
And she went.
CHAPTER IV.
There are many difficulties in this world which, if we refuse to submit to them, will in turn be subdued by us, but a sprained ankle is not one of them. Robert Trenholme, having climbed a hill after he had twisted his foot, and having, contrary to all advice, used it to some extent the next day, was now fairly conquered by the sprain and destined to be held by this foot for many long days. He explained to his brother who the lady was whom he had taken up the hill, why he himself had first happened to be with her, and that he had slipped with one foot in a roadside ditch, and, thinking to catch her up, had run across a field and so missed the lane in the darkness. This was told in the meagre, prosaic way that left no hint of there being more to tell.
"What is she like?" asked Alec, for he had confessed that he had talked to the lady.
"Like?" repeated Robert, at a loss; "I think she must be like her own mother, for she is like none of the other Rexfords."
"All the rest of the family are good-looking."
"Yes," said Robert dreamily.
So Alec jumped to the conclusion that Robert did not consider Miss Rexford good-looking. He did not tell anything more about her or ask anything more. He saw no reason for insulting Robert by saying he had at first overheard her conversation, and that it had been continued to him after she had mistaken one for the other. He wondered over those of her remarks which he remembered, and his family pride was hurt by them. He did not conceive that Robert had been much hurt, simply because he betrayed no sign of injured feeling. Younger members of a family often long retain a curiously lofty conception of their elders, because in childhood they have looked upon them as embodiments of age and wisdom. Alec, in loose fashion of thought, supposed Robert to be too much occupied by more important affairs to pay heed to a woman's opinion of him, but he cherished a dream of some day explaining to Miss Rexford that she was mistaken in his brother's character. His pulse beat quicker at the thought, because it would involve nearness to her and equality of conversation. That Robert had any special fancy for the lady never entered his mind.
Although we may be willing to abuse those who belong to us we always feel that the same or any censure coming from an outsider is more or less unjust; and, too, although the faults of near relatives grieve us more bitterly than the crimes of strangers, yet most of us have an easy-going way of forgetting all about the offence at the first opportunity. There is nothing in the world stronger than the quiet force of the family tie, which, except in case of need, lies usually so passive that its strength is overlooked by the superficial observer. It was by virtue of this tie now that the two brothers, although they had so great a difference, although they were so constituted as to see most things very differently, found themselves glad to be in each other's company. Their hearts grew warmer by mere proximity; they talked of old family incidents, and of the incidents of the present, with equal zest. The one thing they did not immediately mention was the subject of the quarrel about which they had not yet come to an agreement.
One thing that fretted Alec considerably during that Sunday and Monday was that Bates had arrived at Chellaston in such a weak state, and had had so severe an attack of his malady on the Sunday evening, that it was impossible to take him to see the body of the old man who went by the name of Cameron. It was in vain that Bates protested, now more strongly than ever, that he was certain the man was not Cameron; as he would give no proof of his certainty further than what had already been discussed between them, Alec could not but feel that he was unreasonable in refusing to take any interest in the question of identity. However, he was not well enough to be troubled, certainly not well enough to be moved. Alec strode over to Cooper's farm alone, and took a last look at the old man where he lay in a rough shed, and gave his evidence about the death before the coroner.
What few belongings the old man had were taken from the Harmon house by the coroner before Harkness left, but no writing was found upon them. A description of the body was advertised in the Monday's papers, but no claim came quickly. Natural law is imperious, seeking to gather earth's children back to their mother's breast, and when three warm days were past, all of him that bore earthly image and superscription was given back to earth in a corner of the village cemetery. An Adventist minister, who sometimes preached in Chellaston, came to hold such service as he thought suitable over the grave, and Alec Trenholme was one of the very few who stood, hat in hand, to see the simple rite.
They were not in the old graveyard by the river, but in a new cemetery that had been opened on a slope above the village. It was a bare, stony place; shrubs that had been planted had not grown. In the corner where they untie it, except little by little, in a lifetime, or in generations of lives! Alec Trenholme, confronted almost for the first time with the thought that it is not easy to find the ideal modern life, even when one is anxious to conform to it, began tugging at all the strands of difficulty at once, not seeing them very clearly, but still with no notion but that if he set his strength to it, he could unravel them all in the half-hour's walk that lay between him and the college.
He had not got from under the arching elms at the thin end of the village when two young ladies in an open phaeton bowed to him. He was not absent; his mind worked wholesomely at the same instant with his senses. He saw and knew that these were the Miss Browns, to whom Robert had introduced him at the end of the Sunday evening service. He thought them very pretty; he had seen then that they were very gentle and respectful to Robert; he saw now from the smile that accompanied the bow, that he was a person they delighted to honour. They were driving quickly: they were past in a flash of time; and as he replaced his hat upon his head, he thought that he really was a very good-looking fellow, very well proportioned, and straight in the legs. He wondered if his clothes were just the thing; they had not been worn much, but it was a year since he had got them in England to bring out, and their style might be a little out of date! Then he thought with satisfaction that Robert always dressed very well. Robert was very good-looking too. They were really a very fine pair of brothers! Their father had been a very fine—He had got quite a bit further on the road since he met the carriage, so lightly had he stepped to the tune of these thoughts, so brightly had the sun shone upon them. Now he thought of that pile of aprons he had in his portmanteau, and he saw them, not as they were now, freshly calendered in the tight folds of a year's disuse, but as he had often seen them, with splashes of blood and grease on them. He fancied the same stains upon his hands; he remembered the empty shop he had just passed near the general store, which for nearly a year back he had coveted as a business stand. He estimated instinctively the difference in the sort of bow the pretty Brown girls would be likely to give him if he carried his own purpose through. The day seemed duller. He felt more sorry for his brother than he had ever felt before. He looked about at the rough fields, the rude log fences, at the road with its gross unevennesses and side strips of untrimmed weeds. He looked at it all, his man's eyes almost wistful as a girl's. Was it as hard in this new crude condition of things to hew for oneself a new way through the invisible barriers of the time-honoured judgments of men, as it would be where road and field had been smoothed by the passing of generations?
He had this contrast between English and Canadian scenery vividly in his mind, wondering what corresponding social differences, if any, could be found to make his own particular problem of the hour more easy, and all the fine speculations he had had when he came down from the cemetery had resolved themselves into—whether, after all, it would be better to go on being a butcher or not, when he came to the beginning of the Rexford paling. He noticed how battered and dingy it was. The former owner had had it painted at one time, but the paint was almost worn off. The front fencing wanted new pales in many places, and the half acre's space of grass between the verandah and the road was wholly unkempt. It certainly did not look like the abode of a family of any pretensions. It formed, indeed, such a contrast to any house he would have lived in, even had painting and fencing to be done with his own hand, that he felt a sort of wrath rising in him at Miss Rexford's father and brother, that they should suffer her to live in such a place.
He had not come well in front before he observed that the women of the family were grouped at work on the green under a tree near the far end of the house. A moment more, and he saw the lady of the midnight walk coming towards him over the grass. He never doubted that it was she, although he had not seen her before by daylight. She had purposely avoided him on the Sunday; he had felt it natural she should do 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 he had seen many from his own little cure of souls who were shaken by the madman's fervour as he had never been able to move them by precept or example. There he, too, had seen, with sight borrowed from the eyes of the enthusiast, the enthusiast's Lord, seen Him the more readily because there had been times in his life when he had not needed another to show him the loveliness that exceeds all other loveliness. He was versed in the chronicle of the days when the power of God wrought wonders by devoted men, and he asked himself with whom this power had been working here of late—with him, the priest, or with this wandering fool, out of whose lips it would seem that praise was ordained. He looked back to divers hours when he had given himself wholly to the love of God, and to the long reaches of time between them, in which he had not cast away the muck-rake, but had trailed it after him with one hand as he walked forward, looking to the angel and the crown. He seemed to see St. Peter pointing to the life all which he had professed to devote while he had kept back part; and St. Peter said, "Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God."
There was for him the choice that is given to every man in this sort of pain, the choice between dulling his mind to the pain, letting it pass from him as he holds on his way (and God knows it passes easily), or clasping it as the higher good. Perhaps this man would not have been wiser than many other men in his choice had he not looked at the gathering of his muck-rake and in that found no comfort. Since a woman had called this prosperity paltry, it seemed less substantial in his own eyes; but, paltry or worthy, he believed that it was in the power of his younger brother to reverse that prosperity, and he felt neither brave enough to face this misfortune nor bad enough to tamper with that brother's crude ideals for the sake of his own gain. From the length of his own experience, from the present weariness of his soul, he looked upon Alec more than ever as a boy to be shielded from the shock of further disillusion with regard to himself. He had not had Alec's weal a thorn in his conscience for ten months without coming to feel that, if merely for the sake of his own comfort, he would not shoulder that burden again. Now this conception he had of Alec as a weaker man, and of his ideals as crude and yet needing tender dealing, was possibly a mistaken one, yet, so curious is our life that, true or false, it was the thing that at this juncture made him spurn all thought of setting aside the reproach of his roused sense of loss as morbid or unreal. He looked to his early realisation of the all-attractiveness of the love of God, not with the rational view that such phase of religion is ordained to fade in the heat of life, but with passionate regret that by his own fault he had turned away from the glory of life. He thought of the foolish dreamer who had been struck dead in the full impulse of adoration and longing love, and he would have given reason and life itself to have such gate of death open now for him.
His spirit did not rest, but tossed constantly, as a fever patient upon his bed, for rest requires more than the softest of beds; and as even those whose bodies are stretched on pillows of down may be too weak to find bodily rest, so the soul that lies, as do all self-sick souls, in the everlasting arms, too often lacks health to feel the up-bearing.
A clever sailor, whose ship is sinking because of too much freight does not think long before he throws the treasure overboard; a wise man in pain makes quick vows of abstinence from the cause of pain. In Trenholme there was little vestige of that low type of will which we see in lobsters and in many wilful men, who go on clutching whatever they have clutched, whether it be useful or useless, till the claw is cut off. He had not realised that he had fallen from the height of his endeavours before he began to look about eagerly for something that he might sacrifice. But here he was met by the difficulty that proves that in the higher stages of human development honest effort after righteousness is not one whit easier than are man's first simple efforts to put down the brute in him. Trenholme could find in himself no offending member that was not so full of good works toward others that he could hardly destroy it without defrauding them. He had sought nothing for himself that was not a legitimate object of desire. The world, the flesh, and the devil had polished themselves to match all that was best in him, and blended impartially with it, so that in very truth he did not know where to condemn. A brave man, when examined, will confess all that he honourably may, but not more; so Trenholme confessed himself to be worldly, but against that he was forced to confess that a true son of the world would have been insensible to the torture he was groaning under. He upbraided himself for not knowing right from wrong, and yet he knew that it was only a very superficial mind that imagined that without direct inspiration from Heaven it could detect its sin and error truly. Crying for such inspiration, his cry seemed unanswered.
Ah, well, each man must parley as best he may with the Angel who withstands him in the narrow place where there is no way to turn to the right hand or the left. We desire at such times to be shown some such clear portraiture of the ideal to which we must conform in our place and circumstance as shall cause us no more to mistake good for evil. Possibly, if such image of all we ourselves ought to be were given to our gaze, we could not look in its eyes and live. Possibly, if Heaven granted us the knowledge of all thoughts and deeds that would make up the ideal self, we should go on our way producing vile imitations of it and neglecting Heaven, as they do who seek only to imitate the Divine Example. At any rate, such perfection of self-ideal is not given us, except with the years that make up the sum of life.
CHAPTER VI.
Robert Trenholme had a lively wit, and it stood him many times in lieu of chapel walls for within it he could retire at all times and be hidden. Of all that he experienced within his heart at this time not any part was visible to the brother who was his idle visitor; or perhaps only the least part, and that not until the moot point between them was touched upon.
There came a day, two days after the old preacher had been buried, when the elder brother called out:
"Come, my lad, I want to speak to you."
Robert was lying on a long couch improvised for him in the corner of his study. The time was that warm hour of the afternoon when the birds are quiet and even the flies buzz drowsily. Bees in the piebald petunias that grew straggling and sweet above the sill of the open window, dozed long in each sticky chalice. Alec was taking off his boots in the lobby, and in reply to the condescending invitation he muttered some graceless words concerning his grandmother, but he came into the room and sat with his elbows on the table. He had an idea of what might be said, and felt the awkwardness of it.
"That fellow Bates," he observed, "is devouring your book-case indiscriminately. He seems to be in the sort of fever that needs distraction every moment. I asked him what he'd have to read, and he said the next five on the shelf—he's read the first ten."
"It's not of Bates I wish to speak; I want to know what you've decided to do. Are you going to stick to your father's trade, or take to some other?"
Robert held one arm above his head, with his fingers through the leaves of the book he had been reading. He tried to speak in a casual way, but they both had a disagreeable consciousness that the occasion was momentous. Alec's mind assumed the cautious attitude of a schoolboy whispering "Cave". He supposed that the other hoped now to achieve by gentleness what he had been unable to achieve by storm.
"Of course," he answered, "I won't set up here if you'd rather be quit of me. I'll go as far as British Columbia, if that's necessary to make you comfortable."
"By that I understand that in these ten months your mind has not altered."
"No; but as I say, I won't bother you."
"Have you reconsidered the question, or have you stuck to it because you said you would?"
"I have reconsidered it."
"You feel quite satisfied that, as far as you are concerned, this is the right thing to do?"
"Yes."
"Well then, as far as I am concerned, I don't want to drive you to the other side of the continent. You can take advantage of the opening here if you want to."
Alec looked down at the things on the table. He felt the embarrassment of detecting his brother in some private religious exercise; nothing, he thought, but an excess of self-denial could have brought this about; yet he was gratified.
"Look here! You'd better not say that—I might take you at your word."
"Consider that settled. You set up shop, and I will take a fraternal interest in the number of animals you kill, and always tell you with conscientious care when the beef you supply to me is tough. And in the meantime, tell me, like a good fellow, why you stick to this thing. When you flung from me last time you gave me no explanation of what you thought."
"At least," cried Alec, wrath rising at the memory of that quarrel, "I gave you a fair hearing, and knew what you thought."
When anger began he looked his brother full in the face, thus noticing how thin that face was, too thin for a man in the prime of life, and the eye was too bright. As the brief feeling of annoyance subsided, the habitual charm of the elder man's smile made him continue to look at him.
"And yet," continued Robert, "two wrongs do not make a right. That I am a snob does not excuse you for taking up any line of life short of the noblest within your reach."
The other again warned himself against hidden danger. "You're such a confoundedly fascinating fellow, with your smiles and your suppressed religion, I don't wonder the girls run after you. But you are a Jesuit—I never called you a snob—you're giving yourself names to fetch me round to see things your way."
It was an outburst, half of admiring affection, half of angry obstinacy, and the elder brother received it without resentment, albeit a little absently. He was thinking that if Alec held out, "the girls" would not run after him much more. But then he thought that there was one among them who would not think less, who perhaps might think more of him, for this sacrifice. He had not made it for her; it might never be his lot to make any sacrifice for her; yet she perhaps would understand this one and applaud it. The thought brought a sudden light to his face, and Alec watched the light and had no clue by which to understand it. He began, however, defending himself.
"Look here! You suggest I should take the noblest course, as if I had never thought of that before. I'm not lower in the scale of creation than you, and I've had the same bringing up. I've never done anything great, but I've tried not to do the other thing. I felt I should be a sneak when I left school if I disappointed father for the sake of being something fine, and I feel I should be a sneak now if I turned—"
"You acted like the dear fellow I always knew you were in the first instance, but why is it the same now? It's not for his sake, surely, for, for all you know, from where he is now, the sight of you going on with that work may not give him pleasure, but pain."
"No; I went into it to please him, but now he's gone that's ended."
"Then it's not the same now. Why do you say you'd feel like a sneak if you changed? There is, I think, no goddess or patron saint of the trade, who would be personally offended at your desertion."
"You don't understand at all. I'm sick—just sick, of seeing men trying to find something grand enough to do, instead of trying to do the first thing they can grandly."
"I haven't noticed that men are so set on rising."
"No, not always; but when they're not ambitious enough to get something fine to do, they're not ambitious enough to do what they do well, unless it's for the sake of money. Look at the fellows that went to school with us, half of them shopkeepers' sons. How many of them went in with their fathers? Just those who were mean enough to care for nothing but money-making, and those who were too dull to do anything else."
"The education they got was good enough to give them a taste for higher callings."
"Yes"—with a sneer—"and how the masters gloried over such brilliant examples as yourself, who felt themselves 'called higher,' so to speak! You had left school by the time I came to it, but I had your shining tracks pointed out to me all along the way, and old Thompson told me that Wolsey's father was 'in the same line as my papa,' and he instructed me about Kirke White's career; and I, greedy little pig that I was, sucked it all in till I sickened. I've never been able to feed on any of that food since."
In a moment the other continued, "Well, in spite of the fact that our own father was too true and simple ever to be anything but a gentleman, it remains true that the choice of this trade and others on a level with it—"
"Such as hunting and shooting, or the cooking of meats that ladies are encouraged to devote themselves to."
"I was saying—the choice of this trade, or of others on a level with it, be they whatever they are, implies something coarse in the grain of the average man who chooses it, and has a coarsening effect upon him."
"If the old novels are any true picture of life, there was a time when every cleric was a place-hunter. Would you have advised good men to keep out of the church at that time? I'm told there's hardly an honourable man in United States politics: is that less reason, or more, for honest fellows to go into public life there?" (Impatience was waxing again. The words fell after one another in hot haste.) "There's a time coming when every man will be taught to like to keep his hands clean and read the poets; and will you preach to them all then that they mustn't be coarse enough to do necessary work, or do you imagine it will be well done if they all do an hour a day at it in amateur fashion? You're thoroughly inconsistent," he cried.
"Do you imagine I'm trying to argue with you, boy?" cried the other, bitterly. "I could say a thousand things to the point, but I've no desire to say them. I simply wish to state the thing fairly, to see how far you have worked through it."
"I've thought it out rather more thoroughly than you, it seems to me, for at least I'm consistent."
They were both offended; the elder biting his lip over sarcastic words, the younger flushed with hasty indignation. Then, in a minute, the one put away his anger, and the other, forgetting the greater part of his, talked on.
"I'll tell you the sort of thing that's made me feel I should be a sneak to give it up. Just after I left school I went back to visit old Thompson, and he and his wife took me to a ball at the Assembly Rooms. It was quite a swell affair, and there weren't enough men. So old Thompson edged us up to a grand dame with a row of daughters, and I heard him in plethoric whisper informing her, as in duty bound, just who I was, 'but,' added he, as a compensating fact, 'there isn't a finer or more gentlemanly fellow in the room.' So the old hen turned round and took me in with one eye, all my features and proportions; but it wasn't till Thompson told her that father was about to retire, and that I, of course, was looking to enter a higher walk, that she gave permission to trot me up. Do you think I went? They were pretty girls she had, and the music—I'd have given something to dance that night; but if I was the sort of man she'd let dance with her girls, she needn't have taken anything else into account; and if I was decent enough for them, it was because of something else in me other than what I did or didn't do. I swore then, by all that's sweet—by music and pretty girls and everything else—that I'd carve carcases for the rest of my days, and if the ladies didn't want me they might do without me. You know how it was with father; all the professional men in the place were only too glad to have a chat with him in the reading-rooms and the hotel. They knew his worth, but they wouldn't have had him inside their own doors. Well, the worse for their wives and daughters, say I. They did without him; they can do without me. The man that will only have me on condition his trade is not mine can do without me too, and if it's the same in a new country, then the new country be damned!"
The hot-headed speaker, striding about the room, stopped with the word that ended this tirade, and gave it out roundly.
"The thing is," said Robert, "can you do without them—all these men and women who won't have you on your own terms? They constitute all the men and women in the world for you and me, for we don't care for the other sort. Can you do without them? I couldn't." He said the "I couldn't" first as if looking back to the time when he had broken loose from the family tradition; he repeated it more steadfastly, and it seemed to press pathetically into present and future—"I couldn't." The book that he had been idly swinging above his pillow was an old missal, and he lowered it now to shield his face somewhat from his brother's downward gaze.
"No, you couldn't," repeated Alec soberly. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down half pityingly, perhaps with a touch of superiority. "You couldn't; but I can, and I'll stand by my colours. I should be a coward if I didn't."
Robert coloured under his look, under his words, so he turned away and stood by the window. After a minute Robert spoke.
"You haven't given me the slightest reason for your repeated assertion that you would be a coward."
"Yes, I have. That's just what I've been saying."
"You have only explained that you think so the more strongly for all opposition, and that may not be rational. Other men can do this work and be thankful to get it; you can do higher work." His words were constrainedly patient, but they only raised clamour.
"I don't know what you profess and call yourself! What should I change for? To pamper your pride and mine—is that a worthy end? To find something easier and more agreeable—is that manly, when this has been put into my hand? How do I know I could do anything better? I know I can do this well. As for these fine folks you've been talking of, I'll see they get good food, wherever I am; and that's not as easy as you think, nor as often done; and there's not one of them that would do all their grand employments if they weren't catered for; and as for the other men that would do it" (he was incoherent in his heat), "they do it pretty badly, some of them, just because they're coarse in the grain; and you tell me it'll make them coarser; well then, I, who can do it without getting coarse, will do it, till men and women stop eating butcher's meat. You'd think it more pious if I put my religion into being a missionary to the Chinese, or into writing tracts? Well, I don't."
He was enthusiastic; he was perhaps very foolish; but the brother who was older had learned at least this, that it does not follow that a man is in the wrong because he can give no wiser reason for his course than "I take this way because I will take it."
"Disarm yourself, old fellow," he said. "I am not going to try to dissuade you. I tried that last year, and I didn't succeed; and if I had promise of success now, I wouldn't try. Life's a fearful thing, just because, when we shut our eyes to what is right in the morning, at noon it's not given us to see the difference between black and white, unless our eyes get washed with the right sort of tears."
Alec leaned his head out of the window; he felt that his brother was making a muff of himself, and did not like it.
"If you see this thing clearly," Robert continued, "I say, go ahead and do it; but I want you just to see the whole of it. According to you, I am on the wrong track; but I have got far along it, and now I have other people to consider. It seems a pity, when there are only two of us in the world, that we should have to put half the world between us. We used to have the name, at least of being attached." He stopped to find the thread, it was a disconnected speech for him to formulate. He had put his arm under his head now, and was looking round at his brother. "I have never misrepresented anything. For the matter of that, the man who had most to do with putting me in my berth here, knew all that there was to be known about my father. He didn't publish the matter, for the sake of the school; and when I had taken the school, I couldn't publish it either. All the world was free to inquire, but as far as I know, no one has done so; and I have let the sleeping dog lie."
"I never said you ought to have been more talkative. It's not my business."
"The position you take makes it appear that I am in a false position. Give me time to get about again. I ought at least to be more frank with my personal friends. Wait till I have opportunity to speak myself—that is all I ask of you. After that do what you will; but I think it only right to tell you that if you set up shop here, or near here, I should resign my place in this college."
"I'm not going to stay here. I told you I see that won't work."
"Don't be hasty. As I said, it's hard lines if this must separate us. I can keep the church. They can't be particular about my status there, because they can't pay me."
"It's mad to think of such a thing; it would be worse for the college than for you."
"If I knew it would be the worse for the college it might not be right to do it" (he spoke as if this had cost him thought), "but there are plenty who can manage a concern like this, now it is fairly established, even if they could not have worked it up as I have."
"I'd like to see them get another man like you!"—loudly—"H'n, if they accepted your resignation they'd find themselves on the wrong side of the hedge! They wouldn't do it, either; it isn't as if you were not known now for what you are. They can't be such fools as to think that where I am, or what I do, can alter you."
"It is not with the more sensible men who are responsible for the college that the choice would ultimately lie, but with the boys' parents. If the numbers drop off—"
"Then the parents are the greatest idiots—"
There was a world of wrath in the words, but the principal of the New
College, who felt his position so insecure, laughed.
"Yes, you may fairly count on that. A clever woman, who kept a girls' school, told me once that if she had to draw up rules for efficient school-keeping they would begin:—'1st. Drown all the parents!'—My own experience has led me to think she was not far wrong."
Alec stood looking out of the open window with a thunderous face. For several reasons, some of which he hardly understood, he did not want to leave Chellaston; but he had no intention of ruining his brother. It annoyed him that Robert should seriously propose to retire, and more, that he should let jokes and laughter fall on the heels of such a proposal. He did not know that there are hours to some men, coming not in the heat of party conflict, but in the quiet of daily life, when martyrdom would be easy, and any sacrifice short of martyrdom is mere play. And because he did not know this, he did not believe in it, just as the average man does not. His cogitation, however, was not on such abstruse matters, nor was it long, but its result was not insignificant.
"Put your money into it," he said, "and fight it out! Put part of my money into it, if you like, and let us fight it out together."
Perhaps the sentiment that actuated the suggestion, even as concerned part of his own inheritance, was nothing more than pugilistic; the idea, however, came to Robert Trenholme as entirely a new one. The proceeds of his father's successful trade lay temporarily invested, awaiting Alec's decision, and his own share would probably be ample to tide the college over any such shock to its income as might be feared from the circumstances they had been contemplating, and until public confidence might be laboriously regained. The plan was not one that would have occurred to his own mind—first, because the suggestions of his mind were always prudent; secondly, because such a fight was shocking to that part of his nature which was usually uppermost. It would be far more agreeable to him to turn away from the averted eyes of correct taste than to stand brazenly till he was again tolerated. Still, this very thing he disliked most might be the thing that he was meant to do, and also there is nothing more contagious than the passion for war. Alec's bellicose attitude aroused party spirit in him. He knew the power of money; he knew the power of the prestige he had; he began to realise that he could do this thing if he chose.
"You are a piece of consummate conceit," he mocked. "Do you imagine that with a little money, and a very few personal graces, we two can brow-beat the good judgment of the public?"
"The fun of the fight would be worth the money almost," observed Alec parenthetically. Then he jeered: "Brace up, and put on more style; put your groom in livery; get a page to open your front door; agitate till you get some honorary degrees from American colleges! And as for me, I'll send out my bills on parchment paper, with a monogram and a crest."
"Do you so despise your fellow men?" asked Robert sadly.
CHAPTER VII.
For a day or two previous to the conversation of the brothers about Alec's decision, Alec had been debating in his own mind what, after all, that decision had better be. Never had he come so near doubting the principle to which he adhered as at this time. A few days went a long way in Chellaston towards making a stranger, especially if he was a young man with good introduction, feel at home there, and the open friendliness of Chellaston society, acting like the sun in Æsop's fable, had almost made this traveller take off his coat. Had Robert been a person who had formerly agreed with him, it is probable that when the subject was opened, he would have confessed the dubious condition of his heart, and they would together have very carefully considered the advisability of change of plan. Whether the upshot in that case would have been different or not, it is impossible to say, for Robert had not formerly agreed with him, and could not now be assumed to do so, and therefore for Alec, as a part of militant humanity, there was no resource but to stand to his guns, forgetting for the time the weakness in his own camp, because he had no thought of betraying it to the enemy. He who considers such incidents (they are the common sands of life), and yet looks upon the natural heart of man as a very noble thing, would appear to be an optimist.
However that may be, the conversation ended, Alec's heart stood no longer in the doubtful attitude. There are those who look upon confessions and vows as of little importance; but even in the lower affairs of life, when a healthy man has said out what he means, he commonly means it more intensely. When Alec Trenholme had told his brother that he still intended to be a butcher, the thing for him was practically done, and that, not because he would have been ashamed to retract, but because he had no further wish to retract.
"And the mair fules ye are baith," said Bates, having recourse to broad
Scotch to express his indignation when told what had passed.
It was out of good nature that Alec had told the one invalid what had been going on in the other's room, but Bates was only very much annoyed.
"I thought," said he, "that ye'd got that bee out of yer ain bonnet, but ye're baith of ye daft now."
"Come now, Bates; you wouldn't dare to say that to my 'brother, the clergyman.'"
"I know more what's due than to call a minister a fule to his face, but whiles it's necessary to say it behind his back."
"Now I call him a hero, after what he's said to-day."
Alec was enjoying the humour of poking up the giant of conventionality.
"Hoots, man; it's yourself ye regard as a hero! Set yerself up as a
Juggernaut on a car and crush him under the wheels!"
"Oh, I'm going to British Columbia. I won't take him at his word; but I'm pleased he had pluck enough to think of taking the bull by the horns."
"But I'm thinking ye just will take him at his word, for it's the easiest—standing there, patting him on the back, because he's given up to you!"
It was as odd a household this as well might be. Alec spent some of his time offering rough ministrations to his lame brother and asthmatic visitor, but more often left them to the sad but conscientious care of Mrs. Martha, preferring to exercise his brother's horses; and he scoured the country, escaping from social overtures he did not feel prepared to meet. To all three men Mrs. Martha was at this time an object of silent wonder. Before the Adventist disturbance she had appeared a very commonplace person; now, as they saw her going about her daily work, grim in her complete reserve, questions which could hardly be put into words arose in their minds concerning her. She suggested to them such pictorial ideas as one gleans in childhood about the end of the world, and this quite without any effort on their part, but just because she had clothed herself to their eyes in such ideas. Bates, who had exact opinions on all points of theology, tackled her upon what he termed "her errors"; but, perhaps because he had little breath to give to the cause, the other two inmates of the house could not learn that he had gained any influence over her or any additional information as to her state of mind.
Bates himself was so incongruous an element in Principal Trenholme's house that it became evident he could not be induced to remain there long. Sufficiently intelligent to appreciate thoroughly any tokens of ease or education, he was too proud not to resent them involuntarily as implying inferiority on his own part. He had, to a certain degree, fine perception of what good manners involved, but he was not sufficiently simple to act without self-conscious awkwardness when he supposed any deviation from his ordinary habits to be called for. Had he not been miserable in mind and body he might have taken more kindly to carpets and china; but as it was, he longed, as a homesick man for home, for bare floors and the unceremoniousness that comes with tin mugs and a scarcity of plates.
For home as it existed for him—the desolate lake and hills, the childish crone and rude hearth—for these he did not long. It was his home, that place; for into it—into the splashing lake and lonely woods, into the contour of the hills, and into the very logs of which the house was built—he had put as much of himself as can be absorbed by outside things; but just because to return there would be to return to his mind's external habitat, he could not now take comfort in returning. All the multiform solace it might have yielded him had been blasted by the girl from the hotel, who had visited him in secret. Before he had seen Sissy again his one constant longing had been to get done with necessary business, financial and medical, and go back to his place, where sorrow and he could dwell at peace together. He would still go, for he cherished one of those nervous ideas common with sick men, that he could breathe there and nowhere else; but he hated the place that was now rife with memories far more unrestful and galling than memories of the dead can ever be.
He hugged to himself no flattering delusion; in his judgment Sissy had shown herself heartless and cruel; but he did not therefore argue, as a man of politer mind might have done, that the girl he had loved had never existed, that he had loved an idea and, finding it had no resemblance to the reality, he was justified in casting away both, and turning to luxurious disappointment or to a search for some more worthy recipient of the riches of his heart. No such train of reasoning occurred to him. He had thought Sissy was good and unfortunate; he had found her fortunate and guilty of an almost greater degree of callousness than he could forgive; but, nevertheless, Sissy was the person he loved—his little girl, whom he had brought up, his big girl, in whom he centred all his hopes of happy home and of years of mature affection. Sissy was still alive, and he could not endure to think of her living on wholly separated from him. For this reason his mind had no rest in the thought of remaining where he was, or of returning whence he had come, or in the dream of seeking new places. He could think of no satisfaction except that of being near to her and making her a better girl; yet he had promised to have no dealings with her; and not only that, but he now at length perceived the futility of all such care as he might exercise over her. He had thought to shield her by his knowledge of the world, and he had found that she, by natural common sense, had a better knowledge of the world than he by experience; he had thought to protect her by his strong arm, and he had found himself flung off, as she might have flung a feeble thing that clung to her for protection. She was better able to take care of herself in the world than he had been to take care of her, and she did not want his tenderness. Yet he loved her just as he had ever done, and perceived, in the deep well of his heart's love and pity, that she did, in sooth, need something—a tenderer heart it might be—need it more terribly than he had ever fancied need till now. He longed unspeakably to give her this—this crown of womanhood, which she lacked, and in the helplessness of this longing his heart was pining.
"A man isn't going to die because he has asthma," had been the doctor's fiat concerning Bates. He had come to Chellaston apparently so ill that neither he nor his friends would have been much surprised had death been the order of the day, but as the programme was life, not death, he was forced to plan accordingly. His plans were not elaborate; he would go back to the clearing; he would take his aunt back from Turrifs to be with him; he would live as he had lived before.
Would he not sell the land? they asked; for the price offered for it was good, and the lonely life seemed undesirable.
No, he would not sell. It would, he said, be selling a bit of himself; and if there was value in it, it would increase, not diminish, by holding till the country was opened up. When he was dead, his heirs, be they who they might (this he said mysteriously), could do as they would. As for him, he would take a man back from this part of the country to work in Alec's place. His cough, he said, had been worse since he had been beguiled into leaving his wilderness to travel with Alec; the pure air of the solitude would be better than doctors for him.
The journey into which Alec had beguiled him had already had three results: he had sold his lumber at a good price; had found out, by talking with business men at Quebec, what the real value of his land probably was, and would be; and had been put by Dr. Nash into a right way of thinking concerning his disease and its treatment, that would stand him in good stead for years to come; but none of these goodly results did he mention when he summed up the evils and discomforts of the trip in Alec's hearing. If his irascible talk was the index to his mind, certainly any virtue Alec had exercised toward him would need to be its own reward.
He offered to pay Alec his wages up to the time of their arrival in Chellaston, because he had looked after him in his feebleness, and he talked of paying "The Principal" for his board during his sojourn there. When they treated these offers lightly, he sulked, mightily offended. He would have given his life, had it been necessary, for either of the brothers, because of the succour they had lent him; nay more, had they come to him in need a lifetime afterwards, when most men would have had time to forget their benefaction many times over, John Bates would have laid himself, and all that he had, at their disposal; but he was too proud to say "thank you" for what they had done for him, or to confess that he had never been so well treated in his life before.
During his first days in Chellaston he was hardly able to leave his own room; but all the time he talked constantly of leaving the place as soon as he was well enough to do so; and the only reason that he did not bring his will to bear upon his lagging health, and fix the day of departure, was that he could not compel himself to leave the place where Sissy was. He knew he must go, yet he could not. One more interview with her he must have, one more at least before he left Chellaston. He could not devise any way to bring this about without breaking his promise to her, but his intention never faltered—see her he must, if only once, and so the days passed, his mental agitation acting as a drag on the wheels of his recovery.