Trenholme went from Mrs. Rexford's door that same day to pay some visits
of duty in the village. The afternoon was warm, and exquisitely bright
with the sort of dazzling brightness that sometimes presages rain. On
his return he met a certain good man who was the Presbyterian minister
of the place. The Scotch church had a larger following in Chellaston
than the English. The clergyman and the minister were friends of a sort,
a friendship which was cultivated on chance occasions as much from the
desire to exercise and display large-mindedness as from the drawings of
personal sympathy. The meeting this afternoon led to their walking out
of the village together; and when the Scotchman had strolled as far as
the college gate, Trenholme, out of courtesy and interest in the
conversation, walked a mile further up the road with him.
Very beautiful was the road on that bright summer day. They heard the
ripple of the river faintly where it was separated from them by the
Harmon garden and the old cemetery. Further on, the sound of the water
came nearer, for there was only the wilderness of half overgrown pasture
and sumac trees between them and it. Then, where the river curved, they
came by its bank, road and river-side meeting in a grove of majestic
pines. The ground here was soft and fragrant with the pine needles of
half a century; the blue water curled with shadowed wave against matted
roots; the swaying firmament was of lofty branches, and the summer wind
touched into harmony a million tiny harps. Minds that were not choked
with their own activities would surely here have received impressions of
beauty; but these two men were engaged in important conversation, and
they only gave impassive heed to a scene to which they were well
accustomed.
They were talking about improvements and additions which Trenholme hoped
to get made to the college buildings in the course of a few years. The
future of the college was a subject in which he could always become
absorbed, and it was one sufficiently identified with the best interests
of the country to secure the attention of his listener. In this land,
where no church is established, there is so little bitterness existing
between different religious bodies, that the fact that the college was
under Episcopal management made no difference to the Presbyterian's
goodwill towards it. He sent his own boys to school there, admired
Trenholme's enthusiastic devotion to his work, and believed as firmly as
the Principal himself that the school would become a great university.
It was important to Trenholme that this man--that any man of influence,
should believe in him, in his college, and in the great future of both.
The prosperity of his work depended so greatly upon the good opinion of
all, that he had grown into the habit of considering hours well spent
that, like this one, were given to bringing another into sympathy with
himself in the matter of the next projected improvement. It was thus
that he had advanced his work step by step since he came to Chellaston;
if the method sometimes struck his inner self as a little sordid, the
work was still a noble one, and the method necessary to the quick
enlargement he desired. Both men were in full tide of talk upon the
necessity for a new gymnasium, its probable cost, and the best means of
raising the money, when they walked out of the pine shade into an open
stretch of the road.
Soft, mountainous clouds of snowy whiteness were winging their way
across the brilliant blue of the sky. The brightness of the light had
wiped all warm colour from the landscape. The airy shadows of the clouds
coursed over a scene in which the yellow of ripened fields, the green of
the woods on Chellaston Mountain, and the blue of the distance, were
only brought to the eye in the pale, cool tones of high light. The road
and the river ran together now as far as might be seen, the one almost
pure white in its inch-deep dust, the other tumbling rapidly, a dancing
mirror for the light.
The talkers went on, unmindful of dust and heat. Then a cloud came
between them and the sun, changing the hue of all things for the moment.
This lured them further. The oat harvest was ready. The reaping machines
were already in the fields far and near, making noise like that of some
new enormous insect of rattling throat. From roadside trees the cicada
vied with them, making the welkin ring.
There were labourers at various occupations in the fields, but on the
dusty stretch of road there was only one traveller to be seen in front
of the two companions. When they gained upon him they recognised the old
preacher who went by the name of Cameron. The poor old wanderer had been
a nine days' wonder; now his presence elicited no comment. He was
walking cap in hand in the sunshine, just as he had walked in the winter
snow. To Trenholme the sight of him brought little impression beyond a
reminder of his brother's wayward course. It always brought that
reminder; and now, underneath the flow of his talk about college
buildings, was the thought that, if all were done and said that might
be, it was possible that it would be expedient for the future of the New
College that the present principal should resign. This was, of course,
an extreme view of the results of Alec's interference; but Trenholme had
accustomed himself to look at his bugbear in all lights, the most
extreme as well as the most moderate. _That_ for the future; and, for
immediate agitation, there was his resolution to speak to Sophia. As he
walked and talked, his heart was wrestling with multiform care.
With one of those welcome surprises which Nature can bestow, the big
swinging cloud which had shadowed their bit of earth for a few minutes
and then passed off the sun again, now broke upon them in a heavy
shower. They saw the rain first falling on Chellaston Mountain, which
was only about a quarter of a mile distant, falling in the sunshine like
perpendicular rays of misty light; then it swept down upon them; but so
bright was the sunshine the while that it took them a few minutes to
realise that this dazzling shower could actually be wet. Its drenching
character was made apparent by the sight of field labourers running to a
great spreading maple for shelter; then they, literally having regard to
their cloth, ran also and joined the group. They passed the old man on
the road, but when they were all under the tree he also came towards it.
There is no power in the art of words, or of painting, or of music, to
fully describe the perfect gratefulness of a shower on a thirsty day.
The earth and all that belongs to her thrill with the refreshing, and
the human heart feels the thrill just in so far as it is one with the
great plan of nature, and has not cut itself off from the whole by
egotism as a dead branch is cut. All under the tree were pleased in
their own way. The labourers cooled their sweating brows by wiping them
with the shirtsleeves the rain had wet; Trenholme and his friend saw
with contentment the dust laid upon their road, listened to the chirp of
birds that had been silent before, and watched the raindrops dance high
upon the sunny surface of the river.
The old man came quietly to them. The rain falling through sunshine made
a silver glory in the air in which he walked saintlike, his hoary locks
spangled with the shining baptism. He did not heed that his old clothes
were wet. His strong, aged face was set as though looking onward and
upward, with the joyful expression habitual to it.
Trenholme and his friend were not insensible to the picture. They were
remarking upon it when the old man came into their midst. There was
something more of keenness and brightness in his mien than was common to
him; some influence, either of the healing summer or of inward joy,
seemed to have made the avenues of his senses more accessible.
"Sirs," he said, "do you desire the coming of the Lord?"
He asked the question quite simply, and Trenholme, as one humours a
village innocent, replied, "We hope we are giving our lives to advance
His kingdom."
"But the _King,_" said the old man. "He is coming. Do you cry to Him to
come quickly?"
"We hope and trust we shall see Him in His own time," said Trenholme,
still benignly.
"His own time is suddenly, in the night," cried the old man, "when the
Church is sleeping, when her children are planting and building,
selling, buying; and marrying--that is _His time_. We shall see Him. We
shall see His face, when we tell Him that we love Him; we shall hear His
voice when he tells us that He loves us. We shall see Him when we pray;
we shall hear Him give the answer. Sirs, do you desire that He should
come now, and reign over you?"
The labourers bestirred themselves and came nearer. The old man had
always the power of transmitting his excitements to others, so that,
strangely, they felt it incumbent upon them to answer. One, a
dull-looking man, answered "yes," with conventional piety. Another said
sincerely that he would like to get the oats in first. Then, when the
first effect of the enthusiast's influence was passing off, they began
to rebel at having this subject thrust upon them. A youth said rudely
that, as there were two parsons there, Father Cameron was not called on
to preach.
The old man fixed his questioning look on Trenholme. "He will come to
reign," he cried, "to exalt the lowly and meek, to satisfy the men who
hunger for righteousness; and the pure in heart shall live with Him.
Sir, do you desire that He shall come now?"
Trenholme did not give answer as before.
"Poor fellow," said the Presbyterian, pityingly.
The shower was passing over, and they moved away.
The old man lifted his arm, and pointed to the mountain that stood in
all the beauty of its wet verdure. He looked round upon them all, and
there was unusual show of excitement in his manner.
"I have a message to you," he said. "Before another Lord's, day comes,
_He_ will come."
The two ministers heard him as they walked away, and the Scotchman
thought to go back and reprove such an audacious word.
"He is mad; they all know that he is mad," urged Trenholme, dissuading
him.
They looked back, and saw the old man still preaching to the labourers
under the tree. A mare with its foal, and two half-grown colts, had come
up to an open fence within the tree's shadow, and, with their long
gentle heads hanging over, they too seemed to be listening.
The Scotchman, exhilarated by the cooling of the atmosphere, genially
invited Trenholme to a longer walk. Chellaston Mountain, with its cool
shades and fine prospect, was very near. A lane turned from the high
road, which led to the mountain's base. A hospitable farmhouse stood
where the mountain path began to ascend, suggesting sure offer of an
evening meal. Trenholme looked at the peaceful lane, the beautiful hill,
and all the sunny loveliness of the land, and refused the invitation. He
had not time, he said.
So they walked back the mile they had come, and Trenholme little thought
how soon, and with what agitation, he would pass that way again.