The day after his coming, and the next, for some reason the old stranger
called Cameron remained in the brick house to which Harkness had brought
him. The young man, impatient for novelty, if for nothing else, began to
wonder if he had sunk into some stupor of mind from which he would not
emerge. He had heard of him as a preacher, and as the conceptions of
ordinary minds are made up only of the ideas directly presented to them,
he had a vague notion that this old man continually preached. As it was,
he went to his work at the hotel on the third morning, and still left
his strange guest in the old house, walking about in an empty room,
munching some bread with his keen white teeth, his bright eyes half shut
under their bushy brows.
Harkness came to the hotel disconcerted, and, meeting Eliza near the
dining-room, took off his hat in sullen silence. Several men in the room
called after him as he passed. "How's your dancing bear, Harkness?"
"How's the ghost you're befriending?" "How's your coffin-gentleman?"
There was a laugh that rang loudly in the large, half-empty room.
After Harkness had despatched two morning visitors, however, and was
looking out of his window, as was usual in his idle intervals, he
noticed several errand-boys gazing up the road, and in a minute an
advancing group came within his view, old Cameron walking down the
middle of the street hitting the ground nervously with his staff, and
behind him children of various sizes following rather timidly. Every now
and then the old man emitted some sound--a shout, a word of some sort,
not easily understood. It was this that had attracted the following of
children, and was very quickly attracting the attention of every one in
the street. One or two men, and a woman with a shawl over her head, were
coming down the sidewalks the same way and at about the same pace as the
central group, and Harkness more than suspected that they had diverged
from the proper course of their morning errands out of curiosity. He
took more interest in the scene than seemed consistent with his slight
connection with the principal actor. He made an excited movement toward
his door, and his hand actually trembled as he opened it. Eliza was
usually about the passages at this time of day. He called her name.
She put her head over the upper bannister.
"Come down and see Lazarus Cameron!"
"I'll come in a minute."
He saw through the railing of the bannisters the movement of some linen
she was folding.
"He'll be past in a minute." Harkness's voice betrayed his excitement
more than he desired.
Eliza dropped the linen and came downstairs rather quickly. Harkness
returned to his window; she came up beside him. The inner window was
open, only one pane was between them and the outer air. In yards all
round cocks were crowing, as, on a mild day in the Canadian March, cocks
will crow continually. Light snow of the last downfall lay on the
opposite roofs, and made the hills just seen behind them very white. The
whole winter's piles of snow lay in the ridges between the footpaths and
the road. Had it not been that some few of the buildings were of brick,
and that on one or two of the wooden ones the white paint was worn off,
the wide street would have been a picture painted only in different
tones of white. But the clothes of the people were of dark colour, and
the one vehicle in sight was a blue box-sleigh, drawn by a shaggy pony.
Eliza was conscious of the picture only as one is conscious of
surroundings upon which the eye does not focus. Her sight fastened on
the old man, now almost opposite the hotel. He was of a broad, powerful
frame that had certainly once possessed great strength. Even now he was
strong; he stooped a little, but he held his head erect, and the
well-formed, prominent features of his weather-beaten face showed forth
a tremendous force of some sort; even at that distance the brightness of
his eyes was visible under bushy brows, grey as his hair. His clothes
were of the most ordinary sort, old and faded. His cap was of the
commonest fur; he grasped it now in his hand, going bareheaded. Tapping
the ground with his staff, he walked with nervous haste, looking upward
the while, as blind men often look.
Harkness did not look much out of the window; he was inspecting Eliza's
face: and when she turned to him he gave her a glance that, had she been
a weaker woman, would have been translated into many words--question and
invective; but her silence dominated him. It was a look also that, had
he been a stronger man, he would have kept to himself, for it served no
purpose but to betray that there was some undercurrent of antagonism to
her in his mind.
"You're very queer to-day, Mr. Harkness," she remarked, and with that
she withdrew.
But when the door closed she was not really gone to the young man. He
saw her as clearly with his mind as a moment before he had seen her with
his eyes, and he pondered now the expression on her face when she looked
out of the window. It told him, however, absolutely nothing of the
secret he was trying to wring from her.
There was no square in Chellaston, no part of the long street much
wider than any other or more convenient as a public lounging place.
Here, in front of the hotel, was perhaps the most open spot, and
Harkness hoped the old man would make a stand here and preach; but he
turned aside and went down a small side street, so Harkness, who had no
desire to identify himself too publicly with his strange _protégé_, was
forced to leave to the curiosity of others the observation of his
movements.
The curiosity of people in the street also seemed to abate. The more
respectable class of people are too proud to show interest in the same
way that gaping children show it, and most people in this village
belonged to the more respectable class. Those who had come to doors or
windows on the street retired from them just as Harkness had done; those
out in the street went on their ways, with the exception of two men of
the more demonstrative sort, who went and looked down the alley after
the stranger, and called out jestingly to some one in it.
Then the old man stopped, and, with his face still upturned, as if blind
to everything but pure light, took up his position on one side of the
narrow street. He had only gone some forty paces down it. A policeman,
coming up in front of the hotel, looked on, listening to the jesters.
Then he and they drew a little nearer, the children who had followed
stood round, one man appeared at the other end of the alley. On either
side the houses were high and the windows few, but high up in the hotel
there was a small window that lighted a linen press, and at that small
window, with the door of the closet locked on the inside, Eliza stood
unseen, and looked and listened.
The voice of the preacher was loud, unnatural also in its rising and
falling, the voice of a deaf man who could not hear his own tones. His
words were not what any one expected. This was the sermon he preached:
"In a little while He that shall come will not tarry. Many shall say to
Him in that day, 'Lord, Lord,' and He shall say, 'Depart from me; I
never knew you.'"
His voice, which had become very vehement, suddenly sank, and he was
silent.
"Upon my word, that's queer," said one of the men who stood near the
policeman.
"He's staring mad," said the other man in plain clothes. "He should be
in the asylum."
This second man went away, but the first speaker and the policeman drew
still nearer, and the congregation did not diminish, for the man who
left was replaced by the poor woman with the checked shawl over her head
who had first followed the preacher up the street, and who now appeared
standing listening at a house corner. She was well known in the village
as the wife of a drunkard.
The old man began speaking again in softer voice, but there was the same
odd variety of tones which had exciting effect.
"Why do you defraud your brother? Why do you judge your brother? Why do
you set at nought your brother? Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of
these, you do it to Him."
His voice died away again. His strong face had become illumined, and he
brought down his gaze toward the listeners.
"If any man shall do His will he shall know of the doctrine. He will
know--yes, know--for there is no other knowledge as sure as this."
Then, in such a colloquial way that it almost seemed as if the listeners
themselves had asked the question, he said: "What shall we do that we
may work the works of God?"
And he smiled upon them, and held out his hands as if in blessing, and
lifted up his face again to heaven, and cried, "This is the work of God,
that ye believe on Him Whom He hath sent."
As if under some spell, the few to whom he had spoken stood still, till
the preacher slowly shifted himself and began to walk away by the road
he had come.
Some of the children went after him as before. The poor woman
disappeared behind the house she had been standing against. The
policeman and his companion began to talk, looking the while at the
object of their discussion.
Eliza, in the closet, leaned her head against the pile of linen on an
upper shelf, and was quite still for some time.