CHAPTER XIV.
In the latter part of that day Bates suffered a fierce attack of his malady. Everyone in Trenholme's house, including the master himself on crutches, became agile in their desire to alleviate the suffering, and he received their ministrations with that civility which denoted that, had conventionality allowed, he would not have received them; for to fling all that is given him at the heads of the givers is undoubtedly the conduct that nature suggests to a man in pain. Having need, however, of some help, Bates showed now, as before, an evident preference for Alec as an attendant, a preference due probably to the fact that Alec never did anything for him that was not absolutely necessary, and did that only in the most cursory way. When Alec entered his room that night to see, as he cheerfully remarked, whether he was alive or not, Bates turned his face from the wall.
"I think it right to tell ye," he began, and his tone and manner were so stiff that the other knew something painful was coming, "I think it right to tell ye that Eliza Cameron is alive and well. I have seen her."
In his annoyance to think a meeting had occurred Alec made an exclamation that served very well for the surprise that Bates expected.
"Her father," continued Bates, "was decently buried, unknown to me, on his own land, as is the custom in those parts of the country. The girl was the person ye saw get up from the coffin—the one that ye were so frightened of."
This last word of explanation was apparently added that he might be assured Alec followed him, and the listener, standing still in the half-darkened room, did not just then feel resentment for the unnecessary insult. He made some sound to show that he heard.
"Then"—stiffly—"she took the train, and she has been living here ever since, a very respectable young woman, and much thought of. I'm glad to have seen her."
"Well?"
"I thought it right to tell ye, and I'm going home to-morrow or next day."
That was evidently all that was to be told him, and Alec refrained from all such words as he would like to have emitted. But when he was going dumbly out of the room, Bates spoke again.
"Ye're young yet; when ye feel inclined to give your heart to any young thing that you've a caring for, gie it as on the altar of God, and not for what ye'll get in return, and if ye get in answer what ye're wanting, thank God for a free gift."
Then Alec knew that Sissy had been unkind to Bates.
The night being yet early, he willingly recognised an obligation to go and tell Miss Rexford that their mutual solicitude had in some way been rendered needless. It was easy for him to find the lady he desired to see, for while the weather was still warm it was the habit in Chellaston to spend leisure hours outside the house walls rather than in, and Alec Trenholme had already learned that at evening in the Rexford household the father and brother were often exhausted by their day's work and asleep, and the mother occupied by the cribs of her little ones. He found the house, as usual, all open to the warm dry autumn evening, doors and windows wide. The dusk was all within and without, except that, with notes of a mother's lullaby, rays of candle light fell from the nursery window. As his feet brushed the nearer grass, he dimly saw Miss Rexford rise from a hammock swung on the verandah, where she had been lounging with Winifred. She stood behind the verandah railing, and he in the grass below, and they talked together on this subject that had grown, without the intention of either, to be so strong a bond of interest between them. Here it was that Alec could give vent to the pity and indignation which he could not express to the man whose sufferings excited these emotions.
In spite of this visit Sophia sought Eliza again the next day. As she entered the hotel Mr. Hutchins begged a word with her in his little slate-painted office, saying that the young housekeeper had not been like herself for some time, and that he was uneasy, for she made a friend of no one.
"Are you afraid of losing her?" asked Miss Rexford coldly, with slight arching of her brows.
He replied candidly that he had no interest in Eliza's joys or sorrows, except as they might tend to unsettle her in her place. Having, by the use of his own wits, discovered her ability, he felt that he had now a right to it.
Sophia went upstairs, as she was directed, to Eliza's bedroom on the highest storey, and found her there, looking over piles of freshly calendered house linen. The room was large enough, and pleasant—a better bedroom than Sophia or her sisters at present possessed. Eliza was apparently in high spirits. She received her guest with almost loud gaiety.
"What do you think's happened now, Miss Sophia?" cried she. "You remember what I told you about Mrs. Glass? Well, there's two young gentlemen come to the house here yesterday morning, and she's entertained them before at her house in town, so they struck up great friends with her here, and yesterday she had her supper served in the upstairs parlour, and had them, and me, and nobody else. She says one of them saw me out yesterday morning, and was 'smitten'—that's what she calls it."
Eliza gave an affected laugh as she repeated the vulgar word, and coloured a little. "She says if I'll come to see her in town she's no doubt but that he'll 'propose.'".
"But I thought you were not going?"
"I don't care for her," said Eliza, as if ingratitude were a virtue, "but I rather like the young gentleman. That makes a difference. Look here! She says he's getting on in business, and would give me a carriage. How do you think I should look driving in a carriage, like Mrs. Brown? Should I look as grand as she does?"
"Much grander, I daresay, and much handsomer."
"They all give dinner parties at Montreal." Eliza said this reflectively, speaking the name of that city just as an English country girl would speak of "London." "Don't you think I could go to dinner parties as grand as any one? And, look here, they showed me all sorts of photographs the Montreal ladies get taken of themselves, and one was taken with her hair down and her side face turned. And Mrs. Glass has been up here this afternoon, saying that her gentlemen friends say I must be taken in the same way. She was fixing me for it. Look, I'll show you how it is."
Her great masses of hair, left loose apparently from this last visit, were thrown down her back in a moment, and Eliza, looking-glass in hand, sat herself sideways on a chair, and disposed her hair so that it hung with shining copper glow like a curtain behind her pale profile. "What do I look like, Miss Sophia?"
"Like what you are, Eliza—a handsome girl."
"Then why shouldn't I marry a rich man? It would be easier than drudging here, and yet I thought it was grand to be here last year. It's easy enough to get up in the world."
"Yes, when anyone has the right qualities for it."
"I have the right qualities."
"Unscrupulousness?" interrogated Sophia; and then she charged the girl with the falsehood of her name.
Eliza put down her looking-glass and rolled up her hair. There was something almost leonine in her attitude, in her silence, as she fastened the red masses. Sophia felt the influence of strong feeling upon her; she almost felt fear. Then Eliza came and stood in front of her.
"Is he very ill, do you think, Miss Sophia?"
"Not dangerously." Sophia had no doubt as to who was meant. "If he would only take reasonable care he'd be pretty well."
"But he won't," she cried. "On the clearin', when he used to take cold, he'd do all the wrong things. He'll just go and kill himself doing like that now, when he goes back there alone—and winter coming on."
"Do you think you could persuade him not to go?"
"He's just that sort of a man he'd never be happy anywhere else. He hones for the place. No, he'll go back and kill himself. I'm sorry, but it can't be helped. I'm not sorry I came away from him; I'm not sorry I changed my name, and did all the things I s'pose he's told you I did, and that I s'pose you think are so wicked. I'd do it again if I was as frightened and as angry. Was he to make me his slave-wife? That's what he wanted of me! I know the man!"—scornfully—"he said it was for my good, but it was his own way he wanted." All the forced quiescence of her manner had changed to fire. "And if you think that I'm unnatural, and wicked to pretend I had a different name, and to do what I did to get quit of him, then I'll go among people who will think it was clever and a fine joke, and will think more about my fine appearance than about being good all day long."
Sophia was terribly roused by the torrent of feeling that was now pouring forth, not more in words than in silent force, from the young woman who stood over her.
"Go!" she cried, "go to such people. Marry the man who cares for your hair and your good looks. Urge him on to make money, and buy yourself clothes and carriages and houses. I have no doubt you can do it! I tell you, Eliza Cameron, such things are not much worth picking up at a gift, let alone selling the nicer part of yourself for them!"
The two had suddenly clashed, with word and feeling, the one against the other.
The window of Eliza's room was open, and the prospect from it had that far-off peace that the prospect from high windows is apt to have. The perfect weather breathed calm over the distant land, over the nearer village; but inside, the full light fell upon the two women aglow with their quarrel.
Sophia, feeling some instinctive link to the vain, ambitious girl before her, struck with words as one strikes in the dark, aiming at a depth and tenderness that she dimly felt to be there.
She believed in, and yet doubted, the strength in the better part of Eliza's heart; believed, but spoke hurriedly, because she felt that a chilly doubt was coming over her as to whether, after all, there was any comprehension, any answering thrill, for the words she said.
Her own stately beauty was at its height, at its loveliest hour, when she spoke. She had been, in girlhood, what is called a beauty; she had dazzled men's eyes and turned their heads; and when the first bloom was past, she had gone out of the glare, having neither satisfied the world nor been satisfied with it, because of the higher craving that is worldly disability. She had turned into the common paths of life and looked upon her beauty and her triumph as past. And yet, ten years after the triumphs of her girlhood, this day, this hour, found her more beautiful than she had ever been before. The stimulus of a new and more perfect climate, the daily labour for which others pitied her, had done their part. The angels who watch over prayer and effort and failure; and failure and effort and prayer, had laid their hands upon her brow, bestowing graces. As she sat now, speaking out of a full heart, there came a colour and light that gave an ethereal charm to her handsome face. There was no one there to see it; Eliza Cameron was not susceptible to beauty. God, who created beauty in flowers and women, and knew to the full the uses thereof, did not set flowers in gardeners' shows nor women in ball-rooms.
Sophia had spoken strongly, vividly, of the vanity of what men call success, and the emptiness of what they call wealth, but Eliza, self-centred, did not enter into this wide theme.
"You despise me," she repeated sullenly, "because of what I have done."
"What makes you think I despise you?"
She did not intend to draw a confession on the false supposition that Bates had already told all the story, but this was the result. Eliza, with arms folded defiantly, stated such details of her conduct as she supposed, would render her repulsive, stated them badly, and evoked that feeling of repulsion that she was defying.
Sophia was too much roused to need time for thought. "I cannot condemn you, for I have done as bad a thing as you have done, and for the same reason," she cried.
Eliza looked at her, and faltered in her self-righteousness. "I don't believe it," she said rudely. She fell back a pace or two, and took to sorting the piles of white coverlets mechanically.
"You did what you did because of everything in the world that you wanted that you thought you could get that way; and, for the same reason, I once agreed to marry a man I didn't like. If you come to think of it, that was as horrid and unnatural; it is a worse thing to desecrate the life of a living man than the death of a dead one. I stand condemned as much as you, Eliza; but don't you go on now to add to one unnatural deed another as bad."
"Why did you do it?" asked Eliza, drawn, wondering, from the thought of herself.
"I thought I could not bear poverty and the crowd of children at home, and that fortune and rank would give me all I wanted; and the reason I didn't go through with it was that through his generosity I tasted all the advantages in gifts and social distinction before the wedding day, and I found it wasn't worth what I was giving for it, just as you will find some day that all you can gain in the way you are going now is not worth the disagreeableness, let alone the wrong, of the wrong-doing."
"You think that because you are high-minded," said Eliza, beginning again in a nervous way to sort the linen.
"So are you, Eliza." Miss Rexford wondered whether she was true or false in saying it, whether it was the merest flattery to gain an end or the generous conviction of her heart. She did not know. The most noble truths that we utter often seem to us doubtfully true.
Now Sophia felt that what Eliza had said was only the fact—that it was very sad that Mr. Bates should go ill and alone to his lonely home, but that it could not be helped. To whatever degree of repentance and new resolution Eliza might be brought, Sophia saw no way whatever of materially helping Bates; but she urged the girl to go and visit him, and say such kind and penitent things as might be in her power to say, before he set forth on his melancholy journey.
"No," said Eliza, "I won't go"; and this was all that could be obtained from her.
The visit was at an end. Sophia felt that it had been futile, and she did not overlook the rebuff to herself. With this personal affront rankling, and indignation that Eliza should still feel so resentful after all that had been urged on behalf of Bates, she made her way into the street.
She was feeling that life was a weary thing when she chanced, near the end of the village, to look back, and saw Alec Trenholme some way behind, but coming in the same direction. Having her report to give, she waited and brought him to her side.
Sophia told all that had just passed, speaking with a restful feeling of confidence in him. She had never felt just this confidence in a man before; it sprang up from somewhere, she knew not where; probably from the union of her sense of failure and his strength. She even told him the analogy she had drawn between Eliza's conduct and the mistake of her own life, alluding only to what all her little public knew of her deeds; but it seemed to him that she was telling what was sacred to her self-knowledge. He glanced at her often, and drank in all the pleasure of her beauty. He even noticed the simplicity of the cotton gown and leather belt, and the hat that was trimmed only with dried everlasting flowers, such as grew in every field. As she talked his cane struck sometimes a sharp passionate blow among plumes of golden-rod that grew by their path, and snapped many a one.
The roadside grass was ragged. The wild plum shrubs by the fences were bronzed by September. In the fields the stubble was yellow and brown. The scattered white houses were all agleam in the clear, cool sunshine.
As he listened, Alec Trenholme's feeling was not now wrought upon at all by what he was hearing of the girl who had stumbled in and out of his life in ghostly fashion. Her masquerade, with all its consequences, had brought him within near touch of another woman, whose personality at this hour overshadowed his mind to the exclusion of every other interest. He was capable only of thinking that Sophia was treating him as a well-known friend. The compunction suppressed within him culminated when, at her father's gate, Miss Rexford held out her hand for the good-bye grasp of his. The idea that he was playing a false part became intolerable. Impulsively he showed reluctance to take the hand.
"Miss Rexford, I—I'm afraid you think—"
Then he remembered the promise by which he was bound to let Robert tell his own story. Confused, he seemed to know nothing but that he must finish his sentence to satisfy the interrogation in her eyes.
"You think I am a gentleman like Robert. I am only a—"
"What?" she asked, looking upon him good-humouredly, as she would have looked upon a blundering boy.
"I am only a—a—cad, you know."
His face had an uncomfortable look, hot and red. She was puzzled, but the meaning that was in his thought did not enter hers. In a moment that romantic didacticism which was one of the strongest elements in her character had struck his strange words into its own music.
"Oh, Mr. Trenholme!" she cried; "do not so far outdo us all in the grace of confession. We are all willing to own ourselves sinners; but to confess to vulgarity, to be willing to admit that in us personally there is a vein of something vulgar, that, to our shame, we sometimes strike upon! Ah, people must be far nobler than they are before that clause can be added to the General Confession!"
He looked at her, and hardly heard her words; but went on his way with eyes dazzled and heart tumultuous.
When at home he turned into the study, where his brother was still a prisoner. The autumn breeze and sunshine entered even into this domain of books and papers. The little garden was so brimful of bloom that it overflowed within the window-sill.
When he had loitered long enough to make believe that he had not come in for the sake of this speech, Alec said, "I'm going to the West—at least, when Bates is gone, I'll go; and, look here, I don't know that I'd say anything to these people if I were in your case. Don't feel any obligation to say anything on my account."
Principal Trenholme was at his writing-table. "Ah?" said he, prolonging the interrogation with benign inflection.
"Have you come to doubt the righteousness of your own conclusions?" But he did not discuss the subject further.
He was busy, for the students and masters of the college were to assemble in a few days; yet he found time in a minute or two to ask idly, "Where have you been?"
"For one thing, I walked out from the village with Miss Rexford."
"And"—with eyes bent upon his writing—"what do you think of Miss
Rexford?"
Never was question put with less suspicion; it was interesting to Robert only for the pleasure it gave him to pronounce her name, not at all for any weight that he attached to the answer. And Alec answered him indifferently.
"She has a pretty face," said he, nearing the door.
"Yes," the other answered musingly, "yes; 'her face is one of God
Almighty's wonders in a little compass.'"
But Alec had gone out, and did not hear the words nor see the dream of love that they brought into the other's eyes. There was still hope in that dream, the sort of hope that springs up again unawares from the ground where it has been slain.
CHAPTER XV.
It had not been continued resentment against Bates that had made Eliza refuse Miss Rexford's request; it was the memory of the kiss with which he had bade her good-bye. For two days she had been haunted by this memory, yet disregarded it, but when that night came, disturbed by Sophia's words, she locked out the world and took the thing to her heart to see of what stuff it was made.
Eliza lived her last interview with Bates over and over again, until she put out her light, and sat by her bedside alone in the darkness, and wondered at herself and at all things, for his farewell was like a lens through which she looked and the proportion of her world was changed.
There is strange fascination in looking at familiar scenes in unfamiliar aspect. Even little children know this when, from some swinging branch, they turn their heads downwards, and see, not their own field, but fairyland.
Eliza glanced at her past while her sight was yet distorted, it might be, or quickened to clearer vision, by a new pulse of feeling; and, arrested, glanced again and again until she looked clearly, steadily, at the retrospect. The lonely farm in the hills was again present to her eyes, the old woman, the father now dead, and this man. Bates, stern and opinionated, who had so constantly tutored her. Her mind went back, dwelling on details of that home-life; how Bates had ruled, commanded, praised, and chidden, and she had been indifferent to his rule until an hour of fear had turned indifference into hate. It was very strange to look at it all now, to lay it side by side with a lover's kiss and this same man her lover.
Perhaps it was a sense of new power that thrilled her so strangely. It needed no course of reasoning to tell her that she was mistress now, and he slave. His words had never conveyed it to her, but by this sign she knew it with the same sort of certainty we have that there is life in breath. She had sought power, but not this power. Of this dominion she had never dreamed, but she was not so paltry at heart but that it humbled her. She whispered to herself that she wished this had not been; and yet she knew that to herself she lied, for she would rather have obliterated all else in the universe than the moment in which Bates had said farewell. The universe held for her, as for everyone, just so much of the high and holy as she had opened her heart to; and, poor girl, her heart had been shut so that this caress of the man whose life had been nearly wrecked by her deed was the highest, holiest thing that had yet found entrance there, and it brought with it into the darkness of her heart, unrecognised but none the less there, the Heaven which is beyond all selfless love, the God who is its source. Other men might have proffered lavish affection in vain, but in this man's kiss, coming out of his humiliation and resignation, there breathed the power that moves the world.
She did not consider now whether Bates's suffering had been of his own making or hers. She was not now engaged in an exercise of repentance; compunction, if she felt it, came to her in a nervous tremor, a sob, a tear, not in intelligible thought. Her memory gave her pictures, and the rest was feeling—dumb, even within. She crouched upon the floor and leaned her head against the bedside. Dry, trembling sobs came at intervals, passing over her as if some outside force had shaken and left her again; and sometimes, in the quiet of the interval, her lips smiled, but the darkness was around. Then, at length, came tranquillity. Her imagination, which had been strained to work at the bidding of memory, in weariness released itself from hard reality, and in a waking dream, touched, no doubt, into greater vividness by hovering hands of Sleep, she found temporary rest. Dreams partake of reality in that that which is and that which might be, are combined in their semblance of life. Eliza saw the home she had so long hated and lived its life once more, but with this difference, that she, her new present self, was there, and into the old life she brought perforce what knowledge of the world's refinements she had gained in her year of freedom. The knowledge seemed to her much more important than it was, but such as it was, she saw it utilised in the log house, and the old way of life thereby changed, but changed the more because she, she the child Sissy, reigned there now as a queen. It was this idea of reigning, of power, that surely now made this dream—wild, impossible as she still felt it to be—pleasant. But, as she pondered, arranging small details as a stimulated imagination is wont to do, she became gradually conscious that if love were to reign long, the queen of love would be not only queen but slave, and, as by the inevitable action of a true balance, the slave of love would be a ruler too. This new conception, as it at first emerged, was not disagreeable. Her imagination worked on, mapping out days and months to her fascinated heart. Then Sleep came nearer, and turned the self-ordered dream into that which the dreamer mistook for reality. In that far-off home she saw all the bareness and roughness of the lonely life which, do what she would, she could not greatly alter; and there again Bates kissed her; she felt his touch in all its reality, and in her dream she measured the barrenness of the place against the knowledge that her love was his life.
The soul that lay dreaming in this way was the soul of a heavy-limbed, ungracious woman. She lay now on the floor in ungainly attitude, and all the things that were about her in the darkness were of that commonest type with which ignorance with limited resource has essayed to imitate some false ideal of finery, and produced such articles as furniture daubed with painted flowers, jute carpets, and gowns beflounced and gaudy. Yet this soul, shut off from the world now by the curtain of sleep, was spoken to by an angel who blended his own being into recollections of the day, and treated with her concerning the life that is worthy and the life that is vain.
Eliza awoke with a start. She raised herself up stiff and chilly. She looked back upon her dream, at first with confusion and then with contempt. She lit her lamp and the present was around her again.
"No, I will not go," she said to herself. The words had been conned in her fit of rudeness to Sophia Rexford that day, but now they had a wider meaning.
All sweet influences sent out from Heaven to plead with human hearts withdrew for the time, for—such an awful thing is life—we have power to repulse God.
CHAPTER XVI.
Robert Trenholme was still obliged to rest his sprained ankle, and was not yet going out, but an opportunity was afforded him of meeting his friendly neighbours, at least the feminine portion of them, in company, sooner than he anticipated.
The day before the college reassembled it happened that the sewing-circle connected with the church met at Mrs. Rexford's house. The weather was unusually warm for the season; the workers still preferred to sit out of doors, and the grass under the tree at the front of the house was their place of meeting. About a dozen were there, among whom Mrs. and Miss Bennett were conspicuous, when Mrs. Brown and her daughter drove up, a little belated, but full of an interesting project.
"Oh, Mrs. Rexford," they cried, "we have just thought of such a charming plan! Why not send our carriage on to the college, and beg Principal Trenholme to drive back here and sit an hour or two with us? It's so near that, now he is so much better, the motion cannot hurt him; this charming air and the change cannot fail to do him good, so confined as he has been, and we shall all work with the more zeal in his presence."
The plan was approved by all. If there were others there who, with Sophia Rexford, doubted whether greater zeal with the needle would be the result of this addition to their party, they made no objections. They could not but feel that it would be a good thing for the invalid's solitude to be thus broken in upon, for, for some reason or other, Trenholme had been in solitude lately; he had neither invited visitors nor embraced such opportunity as he had of driving out.
Trenholme answered this invitation in person. The motherly members of the party attended him at the carriage door when he drove up, and, with almost affectionate kindness, conducted his limping steps to a reclining chair that had been provided. His crutch, and a certain pensive pallor on his countenance, certainly added to his attractions. Even Sophia Rexford was almost humble in the attentions she offered him, and the other maidens were demonstrative. In spite of such protestations as he made, he was enthroned, as it were, in the most comfortable manner. Fur sleigh robes were spread on the grass for a carpet, and the best of them was used as a rug about his feet.
The majority of women are best pleased by the company of a man whom other men admire. Trenholme had never descended to being, even in leisure hours, a mere "ladies' man"; if he had been that he would not have had his present place in this company. Yet he was not bored by finding himself the only man among so many women; he knew most of these women, their faults and their worthiness, far too well not to be at ease with them, even if he had troubled to give a second thought to their largess of kindliness. He had responded to their unexpected call to meet them together because he had something to say to them, and he said it that afternoon in his own time and in his own way. Had he needed to borrow dignity to sustain their jubilant welcome, his purpose would have lent it to him, and, for the rest, all his heart was overshadowed and filled with the consciousness of Sophia Rexford's presence. He had not seen her since the night in which they had walked through midnight hours together. He could not touch her hand without feeling his own tremble. He did not look at her again.
It was a pretty scene. The women, on their carpet of faded ox and buffalo skins, were grouped on chairs and cushions. The foliage of the maple tree above them was turning pink and crimson, shedding a glow as of red curtains, and some of its leaves were already scattered upon the ragged grass or on the shelving verandah roof of the wooden farmhouse. The words that fell in small talk from the women were not unlike the colour of these fading leaves—useless, but lending softness to the hour.
"And your sewing-party will quite bear the palm for this season, Mrs. Rexford, quite the palm; for no other has been honoured by the presence of the Principal."
It was Mrs. Bennett who spoke; her upright carriage, thin nose, and clear even voice, carried always the suggestion of mild but obstinate self-importance.
The birdlike little hostess, confused by the misapplied praise, remonstrated. "'Tis Mrs. Brown," cried she, "who bears the palm."
Here the younger ladies, to whom nature had kindly given the saving sense of humour, laughed a little—not too obviously—in concert with the man thus lauded.
Then they all fell to talking upon the latest news that Chellaston could afford, which was, that a gentleman, a minister from the south of Maine, had arrived, and by various explanations had identified the old preacher who had been called Cameron as his father. It seemed that the old man had long ago partially lost his wits—senses and brain having been impaired through an accident—but this son had always succeeded in keeping him in a quiet neighbourhood where his condition was understood, until, in the beginning of the previous winter, the poor wanderer had escaped the vigilance of his friends. It was partly on account of the false name which had been given him that they had failed to trace him until the circumstances of his tragic death were advertised.
"The son is culpable. Mad people should be shut up where they can do no mischief." About half the ladies present joined in this comment.
Mrs. Rexford looked round uneasily to see that her young daughter Winifred had not joined the party. Indiscreet usually, she was wonderfully tender in these days of Winifred.
"I am not sure that if he had been my father I would have shut him up."
Trenholme spoke and sighed.
"If he had been my father," Sophia cried vehemently, "I would have gone with him from village to village and door to door; I would rather have begged my bread than kept him from preaching. I would have told the people he was a little mad, but not much, and saner than any of them."
There was enough sympathy with Sophia's vivacity among her friends to make it easy to express herself naturally.
"What is one false opinion more or less?" she cried. "Do any of us imagine that our opinions are just those held in heaven? This old man had all his treasure in heaven, and that is, after all, the best security that heart or mind will not go far astray."
The youngest Miss Brown was sitting on the fur rugs, not very far from Trenholme. She looked up at him, pretty herself in the prettiness of genuine admiration.
"It is such a pity that Miss Rexford is sitting just out of your sight. You would be lenient to the heresy if you could see how becoming it is to the heretic."
But Trenholme was not seen to look round. He was found to be saying that the son of the late preacher evidently held his father in reverence; it seemed that the old man had in his youth been a disciple and preacher under Miller, the founder of the Adventist sect; it was natural that, as his faculties failed, his mind should revert to the excitements of the former time.
Mrs. Bennett had already launched forth an answer to Sophia's enthusiasm. She continued, in spite of Trenholme's intervening remarks. "When I was a girl papa always warned us against talking on serious subjects. He thought we could not understand them."
"I think it was good advice," said Sophia with hardihood.
"Oh yes, naturally—papa being a dean—"
Trenholme encouraged the conversation about the dean. It occurred to him to ask if there was a portrait extant of that worthy. "We are such repetitions of our ancestors," said he, "that I think it is a pity when family portraits are lacking."
Mrs. Bennett regretted that her father's modesty, the fortunes of the family, etc.; but she said there was a very good portrait of her uncle, the admiral, in his son's house in London.
"I do not feel that I represent my ancestors in the least," said Miss
Bennett, "and I should be very sorry if I did."
She certainly did not look very like her mother, as she sat with affectionate nearness to Sophia Rexford, accomplishing more work in an hour with her toil-reddened hands than her mother was likely to do in two.
"Ah, ladies' feelings!" Trenholme rallied her openly. "But whatever you may feel, you assuredly do represent them, and owe to them all you are."
"Very true," said the mother approvingly. "Papa had black hair, Principal Trenholme; and although my daughter's hair is brown, I often notice in it just that gloss and curl that was so beautiful in his."
"Yes, like and unlike are oddly blended. My father was a butcher by trade, and although my work in life has been widely different from his, I often notice in myself something of just those qualities which enabled him to succeed so markedly, and I know that they are my chief reliance. My brother, who has determined to follow my father's trade, is not so like him in many ways as I am."
If he had said that his father had had red hair, he would not have said it with less emphasis. No one present would have doubted his truthfulness on the one point, nor did they now doubt it on this other; but no one mastered the sense and force of what he had said until minutes, more or less in each case, had flown past, and in the meantime he had talked on, and his talk had drifted to other points in the subject of heredity. Sophia answered him; the discussion became general.
Blue and Red came offering cups of tea.
"Aren't they pretty?" said the youngest Miss Brown, again lifting her eyes to Trenholme for sympathy in her admiration.
"Sh—sh—," said the elder ladies, as if it were possible that Blue and
Red could be kept in ignorance of their own charms.
A man nervously tired can feel acute disappointment at the smallest, silliest thing. Trenholme had expected that Sophia would pour out his tea; he thought it would have refreshed him then to the very soul, even if she had given it indifferently. The cup he took seemed like some bitter draught he was swallowing for politeness' sake. When it, and all the necessary talk concerning it, were finished, together with other matters belonging to the hour, he got himself out of his big chair, and Mrs. Brown's horses, that had been switching their tails in the lane, drove him home.
The carriage gone, Mrs. Brown's curiosity was at hand directly. She and Mrs. Rexford were standing apart where with motherly kindness they had been bidding him good-bye.
"I suppose, Mrs. Rexford, you know—you have always known—this fact concerning Principal Trenholme's origin. I mean what he alluded to just now." Mrs. Brown spoke, not observing Mrs. Rexford but the group in which her daughters were prominent figures.
Nothing ever impressed Mrs. Rexford's imagination vividly that did not concern her own family.
"I do not think it has been named to me," said she, "but no doubt my husband and Sophia—"
"You think they have known it?" It was of importance to Mrs. Brown to know whether Captain Rexford and Sophia had known or not; for if they knew and made no difference—"If Miss Rexford has not objected. She is surely a judge in such matters!"
"Sophia! Yes, to be sure, Sophia is very highly connected on her mother's side. I often say to my husband that I am a mere nobody compared with his first wife. But Sophia is not proud. Sophia would be kind to the lowest, Mrs. Brown." (This praise was used with vaguest application.) "She has such a good heart! Really, what she has done for me and my children—"
A light broke in upon Mrs. Brown's mind. She heard nothing concerning Mrs. Rexford and her children. She knew now, or felt sure she knew, why Miss Rexford had always seemed a little stiff when Trenholme was praised. Her attitude towards him, it appeared, had always been that of mere "kindness." Now, up to this moment, Mrs. Brown, although not a designing woman, had entertained comfortable motherly hopes that Trenholme might ultimately espouse one of her daughters, and it had certainly advanced him somewhat in her favour that his early acquaintance with Miss Rexford was an undisputed fact; but in the light of what Mrs. Rexford had just said of her daughter's good-heartedness all assumed a different aspect. Mrs. Brown was in no way "highly connected," belonging merely to the prosperous middle class, but, with the true colonial spirit that recognises only distance below, none above, she began to consider whether, in the future, her rôle should not be that of mere kindness also. To do her justice, she did not decide the question just then.
The voice of her youngest daughter was heard laughing rather immoderately. "Indeed, Mrs. Bennett," she laughed, "we all heard him say it, and, unlike you, we believed our ears. We'll draw up a statement to that effect and sign our names, if that is necessary to assure you."
Her mother, approaching, detected, as no one else did, a strain of hysterical excitement in her laughter, and bid her rise to come home, but she did not heed the summons.
"Yes, he did say it. That handsome brother of his, to whom I lost my heart two weeks ago, does really—well, to put it plainly, knock animals on the head, you know, and sell them in chops, and—what do you call it, mamma?—the sirloin and brisket. 'How do you do, Mr. Trenholme? I want some meat for dinner—chops, I think.' Oh, how I should love to go and buy chops!"
Sophia was kneeling over a pile of work, folding it. She asked the boisterous girl for the cloth she had been sewing, and her voice was hard and impatient, as if she wished the talk at an end.
Mrs. Bennett arose and wrapped her cape about her thin shoulders, not without some air of majesty. There was a bitter angry expression upon her delicate face.
"All that I wish to say in this matter is, that I never knew this before; others may have been in possession of these facts, but I was not."
"If you had been, of course you would have honoured him the more for triumphing over difficulties," answered the elder Miss Brown, with smooth sarcasm.
"Yes, certainly that, of course; but I should have thought him very unsuitably placed as an instructor of youth and—"
The right adjustment of the cape seemed to interrupt the speech, but others mentally supplied the ending with reference to Miss Bennett.
"Miss Rexford, being one of Principal Trenholme's oldest friends, is not taken by surprise." Some one said this; Sophia hardly knew who it was. She knelt upright by the packing basket and threw back her head.
"I met him often at my own uncle's house. My uncle knew him thoroughly, and liked him well."
Most of the women there were sensibly commenting on the amount of work done, and allotting shares for the ensuing week. It would take a week at least to rouse them to the state of interest at which others had already arrived.
Her cape adjusted, Mrs. Bennett found something else to say. "Of course, personally, it makes no difference to me, for I have always felt there was something about Principal Trenholme—that is, that he was not—It is a little hard to express; one feels, rather than speaks, these things."
It was a lie, but what was remarkable about it was that its author did not know it for one. In the last half-hour she had convinced herself that she had always suffered in Trenholme's presence from his lack of refinement, and there was little hope that an imagination that could make such strides would not soon discover in him positive coarseness. As the party dispersed she was able to speak aside to Sophia.
"I see how you look upon it," she said. "There is no difference between one trade and another, or between a man who deals in cargoes of cattle and one who sells meat in a shop."—She was weakly excited; her voice trembled. "Looking down from a higher class, we must see that, although all trades are in a sense praiseworthy, one is as bad as another."
"They seem to me very much on a level," said Sophia. There was still a hard ring in her voice. She looked straight before her.
"Of course in this country"—Mrs. Bennett murmured something half-audible about the Browns. "One cannot afford to be too particular whom one meets, but I certainly should have thought that in our pulpits—in our schools—"
She did not finish. Her thin mouth was settling into curves that bespoke that relentless cruelty which in the minds of certain people, is synonymous with justice.
It was a rickety, weather-stained chaise in which Mrs. Bennett and her daughter were to drive home. As Miss Bennett untied the horse herself, there was a bright red spot on either of her cheeks. She had made no remark on the subject on which her mother was talking, nor did she speak now. She was in love with Trenholme, that is, as much in love as a practical woman can be with a man from whom she has little hope of a return. She was not as pretty as many girls are, nor had she the advantages of dress and leisure by which to make herself attractive. She had hoped little, but in an honest, humble-minded, quiet way she had preferred this man to any other. Now, although she was as different from her mother as nature could make her, precepts with which her mind had been plied from infancy had formed her thought. She was incapable of self-deception, she knew that he had been her ideal man; but she was also incapable of seeing him in the same light now as heretofore.
Miss Bennett held the reins tight and gave her horse smart strokes of the whip. The spiritless animal took such driving passively, as it jogged down the quiet road by the enclosure of the New College.
Unconscious that her words were inconsistent with what she had so lately said, Mrs. Bennett complained again. "My nerves have received quite a shock; I am all in a tremble." It was true; she was even wiping away genuine tears. "Oh, my dear, it's a terribly low occupation. Oh, my dear, the things I have heard they do—the atrocities they commit!"
"I daresay what you heard was true," retorted Miss Bennett, "but it does not follow that they are all alike." Without perceiving clearly the extent of the fallacy, she felt called upon to oppose the generalisations of a superficial mind.
So they passed out of sight of Trenholme's house. Inside he sat at his desk, plunged again in the work of writing business letters. We seldom realise in what way we give out the force that is within us, or in what proportion it flows into this act or that. Trenholme was under the impression that what he had done that afternoon had been done without effort? The effort, as he realised it, had come days and weeks before. Yet, as he worked through the hours that were left of that day's light, he felt a weariness of body and mind that was almost equivalent to a desire for death.
CHAPTER XVII.
Sophia Rexford stood and watched the last of the afternoon's company as, some driving and some on foot, they passed in different directions along the level road. It was a very peaceful scene. The neighbourhood lay sunning itself in the last warmth of the summer, and the neighbours, to all appearance, were moving homeward in utmost tranquillity. Sophia was not at peace; she was holding stern rule over her mind, saying, "Be at peace; who hath disturbed thee?" This rule lasted not many minutes; then suddenly mutiny. "Good Heavens!" she cried within herself, "how indiscreet I have been, making friends with these men. Shall I never learn wisdom—I who have sought to direct others?" The recollections that came caused her, in the sting of mortified pride, to strike her hand with painful force against a chair near her. The bruise recalled her to calm. The chair she had struck was that large one in which Robert Trenholme had reclined. It aided her to ponder upon the man who had so lately been seen on its cushions, and, in truth, her pondering bewildered her. Why had he not said as much to her years before, and why had he now said what he did, as he did? She thought she had known this man, had fathomed him as to faults and virtues, though at some times she rated their combination more reverently than at others. Truth to tell, she had known him well; her judgment, impelled by the suggestion of his possible love, had scanned him patiently. Yet now she owned herself at fault, unable to construe the manner of this action or assign a particular motive with which it was in harmony. It is by manner that the individual is revealed (for many men may do the same deed), and a friend who perforce must know a friend only by faith and the guessing of the unseen by the seen, fastens instinctively upon signs too slight to be written in the minutest history. At this moment, as Sophia stood among the vacant seats, the scene of the conversation which had just taken place, she felt that her insight into Robert Trenholme failed her. She recalled a certain peace and contentment that, in spite of fatigue, was written on his face. She set it by what he had said, and gained from it an unreasoning belief that he was a nobler man than she had lately supposed him to be; in the same breath her heart blamed him bitterly for not having told her this before, and for telling it now as if, forsooth, it was a matter of no importance. "How dare he?" Again herself within herself was rampant, talking wildly. "How dare he?" asked Anger. Then Scorn, demanded peace again, for, "It is not of importance to me," said Scorn.
Blue and Red and Winifred and the little boys came out to carry in the chairs and rugs. A cool breeze came with the reddening of the sunlight, and stirred the maple tree into its evening whispering.
As Sophia worked with the children the turmoil of her thought went on. Something constantly stung her pride like the lash of a whip; she turned and shifted her mind to avoid it, and could not.
She had deliberately deceived her friends when she had asserted that her uncle had known all Trenholme's affairs. She had not the slightest doubt now, looking back, that he had known—a thousand small things testified to it; but he had not made a confidante of her, his niece, and she knew that that would be the inference drawn from her assertion. She knew, too, that the reason her uncle, who had died soon after, had not told her was that he never dreamed that then or afterwards she would come into intimate relationship with his protégé. To give the impression that he, and she also, knowing Trenholme's origin, had overlooked it, was totally false. Yet she did not regret this falsehood. Who with a spark of chivalry would not have dealt as hard a blow as strength might permit in return for so mean an attack on the absent man? But none the less did her heart upbraid the man she had defended.
Sophia stood, as in a place where two seas met, between her indignation against the spirit Mrs. Bennett had displayed (and which she knew was lying latent ready to be fanned into flame in the hearts of only too many of Trenholme's so-called friends) and her indignation against Trenholme and his history. But it was neither the one current of emotion nor the other that caused that dagger-like pain that stabbed her pride to the quick. It was not Robert Trenholme's concerns that touched her self-love.
She had gained her own room to be alone. "Heaven help me," she cried (her ejaculation had perhaps no meaning except that she had need of expletive), "what a fool I have been!"
She rehearsed each meeting she had had with Alec Trenholme. How she had dallied with him in fields and on the road, seeing now clearly, as never before, how she had smiled upon him, how she had bewitched him. What mischance had led her on? She sprang up again from the seat into which she had sunk. "Mercy!" she cried in an agony of shame, "was ever woman so foolish as I? I have treated him as a friend, and he is—!"
Then for some reason, she ceased to think of herself and thought of him. She considered: had he made no effort? had he felt no pain? She saw how he had waveringly tried to avoid her at first, and how, at last, he had tried to warn her. She thought upon the epithet he had applied to himself when trying to explain himself to her: she lifted her head again, and, in a glow of generous thought, she felt that this was a friend of whom no one need be ashamed.
The bell for the evening meal rang. There are hours in which we transcend ourselves, but a little thing brings us back to the level on which we live. As Sophia hastily brushed her dark hair, mortified pride stabbed her again, and scorn again came to the rescue. "What does it matter? It would have been better, truly, if I had had less to do with him, but what has passed is of no importance to anyone, least of all to me!"
As she had begun at first to rule her heart, so did she rule it all that evening. But when she was again within her room alone she lingered, looking out of her small casement at the fields where she had met Alec Trenholme, at the road where she walked with him: all was white and cold now in the moonlight. And soon she leaned her head against the pane and wept.
Those are often the bitterest tears for which we can furnish no definite cause; when courage fails, we see earth only through our tears, and all form is out of proportion, all colour crude, all music discord, and every heart a well of evil, and we bewail, not our own woes only, but the woe of the world. So this proud woman wept, and prayed God wildly to save the world out of its evil into His good—and did not, could not, tell herself what was the exciting cause of her tears.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Just as that day had turned rosy at the close and then white with the lesser light of night, so did the summer now fade away in a blaze of colour, giving one last display of what life could do before leaving the land to the shroud of the winter's snow. Cool bracing winds, of which there had already been foretaste, now swept the land. The sun seemed brighter because the air was clearer. The college boys had returned, and were heard daily shouting at their games. A few days made all this outward difference. No other difference had as yet come about.
Now that harvest was over and Captain Rexford was more at leisure, Sophia felt that she must no longer postpone the disagreeable duty of speaking to him seriously about his younger daughters. She chose an hour on Sunday when he and she were walking together to a distant point on the farm. She told the story of the flirtation of poor little Blue and Red slightly, for she felt that to slight it as much as possible was to put it in its true proportion.
"Yes," said Captain Rexford. He took off his hat and brushed back his hair nervously. He had many difficulties in his life. "Yes, and then there is Winifred."
"Girls here are not kept always under the eye of older people, as is usually considered necessary in England; but then they learn from their infancy to be more self-reliant. We have taken the safeguards of governess and schoolroom suddenly from children almost grown-up, and set them where no one has had time to look after them. They would need to have been miraculously wise if, with time on their hands, they had not spent some of it absurdly."
"Yes," he said again unhappily, "what must we do about it, my dear? Your hands are already full." He always leaned on Sophia.
"I fear there is only one thing to do. We cannot give them society; we cannot give them further education; they must have the poor woman's protection—work—to take up their time and thoughts. We have saved them from hard work until now, and it has not been true kindness."
He did not answer. He believed what she said, but the truth was very disagreeable to him. When he spoke again he had left that subject.
"I am sorry for this affair about the Trenholmes. I like Trenholme, and, of course, he has shown himself able to rise. The younger fellow is plain and bluff, like enough to what he is."
"His manners are perfectly simple, but I—I certainly never imagined—"
"Oh, certainly not; otherwise, you would hardly have received him as you did. For us men, of course, in this country—" He gave a dignified wave of his hand.
"Are you sure of that, papa,—that I would not have received him?" It was exactly what she had been saying to herself for days; but, now that another said it, the sentiment involved seemed weak.
"I am aware"—his tone was resigned—"that your opinions are always more radical than I can approve. The extreme always seems to have, shall I say, some attraction for you; but still, my daughter, I believe you are not lacking in proper pride."
"I am too proud to think that for a good many days I have liked a man who was not fit for my liking. I prefer to believe that he is fit until I can have more conclusive proof to the contrary."
Captain Rexford walked some minutes in sterner silence. He had long ceased to regard Sophia as under his authority.
"Still I hope, my dear, the next time you see this young man—rudeness, of course, being impossible to you, and unnecessary—still I hope you will allow your manner to indicate that a certain distance must be preserved."
Her own sense of expediency had been urging this course upon her, but she had not been able to bring her mind to it.
"I should show myself his inferior if I could deliberately hurt him," she cried, with feeling. The trouble of a long debate she had been having with herself, her uncertainty what to feel or think, gave more emotion to her voice than she supposed.
"My dear daughter!" cried the father, with evident agitation.
Sophia instantly knew on what suspicion this sudden sympathy was bestowed. She was too indignant to deny the charge.
"Well, papa?"
"He is, no doubt, a worthy man; but"—he got no help from his daughter; she was walking beside him with imperious mien—"in short, my dear, I hope—indeed, if I could think that, under false pretences, he could have won—"
"He is the last man to seek to win anything under a false pretence." The coldness of her manner but thinly veiled her vehemence; but even in that vehemence she perceived that what proofs of her assertion she could bring would savour of too particular a recollection. She let it stand unproved.
"My dear child!" he cried, in affectionate distress, "I know that you will not forget that rank, birth—" He looked at her, and, seeing that she appeared intractable, exclaimed further, "It's no new thing that ladies should, in a fit of madness, demean themselves—young ladies frequently marry grooms; but, believe me, my dear Sophia"—earnestly—"no happiness ever came of such a thing—only misery, and vice, and squalor."
But here she laughed with irresistible mirth. "Young women who elope with grooms are not likely to have much basis of happiness in themselves. And you think me capable of fancying love for a man without education or refinement, a man with whom I could have nothing in common that would last beyond a day! What have I ever done, papa, that you should bring such, an accusation?"
"I certainly beg your pardon, my daughter, if I have maligned you."
"You have maligned me; there is no 'if' about it."
"My dear, I certainly apologise. I thought, from the way in which you spoke—"
"You thought I was expressing too warm a regard for Mr. Alec Trenholme; but that has nothing whatever to do with what you have just been talking about; for, if he were a groom, if he chose to sweep the streets, he would be as far removed from the kind of man you have just had in your mind as you and I are; and, if he were not I could take no interest in him."
The gloom on Captain Rexford's brow, which had been dispelled by her laughter, gathered again.
"Separate the character of the man from his occupation," she cried. "Grant that he is what we would all like in a friend. Separate him, too, from any idea that I would marry him, for I was not thinking of such a thing. Is there not enough left to distress me? Do you think I underrate the evil of the occupation, even though I believe it has not tainted him? Having owned him as a friend, isn't it difficult to know what degree of friendship I can continue to own for him?"
"My dear, I think you hardly realise how unwise it is to think of friendship between yourself and any such man; recognition of worth there may be, but nothing more."
"Oh, papa!"—impatiently—"think of it as you will, but listen to what I have to say; for I am in trouble. You were sorry for me just now when you imagined I was in love; try and understand what I say now, for I am in distress. I cannot see through this question—what is the right and what is the wrong."
"I do not think I understand you my dear," he said.
She had stopped, and leaned back on the roadside fence. He stood before her. All around them the yellow golden-rod and mullein were waving in the wind, and lithe young trees bent with their coloured leaves. Captain Rexford looked at his daughter, and wondered, in his slow way, that she was not content to be as fair and stately as the flowers without perplexing herself thus.
"Papa, pray listen. You know that night when I went to seek Winifred—you do not know, because I have not told you—but just before the old man died. When he stood there, looking up and praying that our Saviour would come again, there was not one of us who was not carried away with the thought of that coming—the thought that when it comes all time will be present, not past; and, papa, the clouds parted just a little, and we saw through, beyond all the damp, dark gloom of the place we were in, into a place of such perfect clearness and beauty beyond—I can't explain it, but it seemed like an emblem of the difference that would be between our muddy ways of thinking of things and the way that we should think if we lived always for the sake of the time when He will come—and it is very easy to talk of that difference in a large general way, and it does no good—but to bring each particular thing to that test is practical. Here, for instance, you and I ought to reconsider our beliefs and prejudices as they regard this man we are talking about, and find out what part of them, in God's sight, is pure and strong and to be maintained, and what part is unworthy and to be cast away. Is it easy, even in such a small matter as this?"
Captain Rexford took off his hat in tribute to his theme, and stood bareheaded. He looked what he was—a military man of the past and more formal generation, who with difficulty had adapted himself to the dress and habits of a farmer. He was now honestly doing his utmost to bring himself to something still more foreign to his former experience.
"To put it in a practical way, papa: if our Lord were coming to-morrow, how would you advise me to meet Alec Trenholme to-day?"
"Of course," began Captain Rexford, "in sight of the Almighty all men are equal."
"No, no," she pleaded, "by all that is true, men are not equal nor are occupations equal. Everything has its advantages and disadvantages. It is not as well to be stupid as to be wise, to be untaught as to be taught, to be ugly as to be beautiful; it is not as good to kill cattle as to till the soil, and it is not as good to be a farmer as to be a poet. It is just because moralists go too far, and say what is not true, that they fail. External things are of more importance to their Creator than they are even to us."
Captain Rexford brushed his hat with his sleeve. The thing that he was most anxious to do at that moment was to pacify his daughter.
"But if you feel this difference so keenly, Sophia, what then perplexes you?"
"I want to know how to deal with these differences, for the way we have been accustomed to deal with them is false. This case, where one brother is at the top of our little society and the other at the bottom, shows it. Not all false—there comes the difficulty" (her face was full of distress), "but largely false. If we have any spiritual life in us it is because we have heard the call that Lazarus heard in the tomb, but the opinions we will not let God transform are the graveclothes that are binding us hand and foot."
"My dear, I certainly think it right that we should live as much as possible as we should wish to have lived when we come to die, but I do not know that for that it is necessary to make a radical change in our views."
"Look you, dear father, if we were willing to step out of our own thoughts about everything as out of a hindering garment, and go forth in the thoughts in which God is willing to clothe us, we should see a new heaven and a new earth; but—but—" she sought her word.
"There may be truth in what you say" (his words showed how far he had been able to follow her), "but your views would lead to very revolutionary practices."
"Revolution! Ah, that takes place when men take some new idea of their own, like the bit, between their teeth, and run. But I said to live in His ideas—His, without Whom nothing was made that was made; Who caused creation to revolve slowly out of chaos" (she looked around at the manifold life of tree and flower and bird as she spoke); "Who will not break the reed of our customs as long as there is any true substance left in it to make music with."
"It sounds very beautiful, my dear, but is it practicable?"
"As practicable as is any holy life!" she cried. "We believe; if we do not live by a miracle we have no sort or manner of right to preach to those who do not believe."
Captain Rexford would have died for his belief in miracles, but he only believed in them at the distance of some eighteen hundred years or more.
"How would you apply this?" he asked, mildly indulgent.
"To the question of each hour as it comes. What, for instance, is the right way to act to Alec Trenholme?"
When she came to his name for some reason she left her standing-place, and they were now walking on side by side.
"Well, Sophia, you bring an instance, and you say, 'put it practically.' I will do so. This village is badly in need of such a tradesman. Even the hotel, and other houses that can afford it, grumble at having to obtain their supplies by rail, and we are badly enough served, as you know. I have no idea that this young man has any notion of settling here, but, suppose he did" (Captain Rexford said his last words as if they capped a climax), "you will see at a glance that in that case any recognition of equality such as you seem to be proposing, would be impossible. It would be mere confusion."
"And why should he not settle here? Are we, a Christian community, unable to devise a way of treating him and his brother that would neither hurt their feelings nor our welfare, that would be equally consonant with our duty to God and our own dignity? Or must he go, because our dignity is such a fragile thing that it would need to be supported by actions that we could not offer to God?"
"You know, my dear, if you will excuse my saying so, I think you are pushing this point a little too far. If it were possible to live up to such a high ideal—"
"I would rather die to-night than think that it was impossible."
"My dear" (he was manifestly annoyed now), "you really express yourself too strongly."
"But what use would it be to live?" She was going on but she stopped.
What use was it to talk? None.
She let the subject pass and they conversed on other things.
She felt strange loneliness. "Am I, in truth, fantastical?" she sighed, "or, if Heaven is witness to the sober truth of that which I conceive, am I so weak as to need other sympathy?" This was the tenor, not the words, of her thought. Yet all the way home, as they talked and walked through the glowing autumn land, her heart was aching.