Trenholme went out on the verandah. At first, in the night, he saw
nothing but the shadowy forms of the college building and of the trees
upon the road. It was not raining at the moment, but the wind made it
hard to catch any sound continuously. He thought he heard talking of
more than one voice, he could not tell where. Then he heard wheels begin
to move on the road. Presently he saw something passing the trees--some
vehicle, and it was going at a good pace out from the village. Shod
though he was only in slippers, he shut his door behind him, and ran
across the college grounds to the road; but the vehicle was already out
of sight, and on the soft mud he could hear no further sound.
Trenholme stood hardly knowing what to think. He wore no hat; the damp,
cool air was grateful to his head, but he gave no thought to it. Just
then, from the other way of the road, he heard a light, elastic step and
saw a figure that, even in the darkness, he could not fail to know.
"Sophia!" There was fear in his voice.
"Have you seen Winifred?" she cried.
"Winifred? No," he called, back.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, breathless. She never noticed that
he had called her by name. The abruptness of her own question was
evidently atoned for by some necessity the nature of which he had not
yet entirely grasped. Yet a knowledge, gleaned too late from all the
occurrences of the evening, leaped up within him to anticipate her
tidings.
"Winifred has gone out since dark. Whether she is alone or not I don't
know, but she has gone to the mountain. She means to climb it to-night
because they have told her that--that----"
His lady-love stopped. Voice and language seemed alike to fail her when
she essayed to tell him, and he, awed at the thought of hearing such
sacred words from her lips, awed to think that the sword of this
fanaticism had come so near as to strike the pure young girl who was so
dear to them both, took her pause as if it had told him everything.
"How do you know?" His words were brief and stern.
She was walking on, he thought merely from excitement. As he kept up
with her he perceived, more by quickness of sympathy than by any sign,
that, in her effort to speak, she had begun to weep. She walked erect,
giving no heed to her own tears nor lifting a hand to wipe them, only at
first her throat refused to articulate a reply, and when she spoke it
was quickly, a word or two at a time, as though she feared her voice
would be traitor to her.
"She left a paper for me." And then she added, "She wrote on it--what
she was afraid to say--dear child!"
He was silent a moment, listening with bowed head lest she should tell
more. He thought he saw her now dash the tears from her face. She was
walking fast, and he felt that she must not go further, also that he had
no time to lose; so he told her hastily that he thought his housekeeper
had gone also to the mountain, and why he thought so. He said that he
hoped and believed Winifred would be with her, and that it was not many
minutes since they had driven away. He would go at once, hoping to
overtake them on the difficult ascent, and Miss Rexford, he said, must
go home and send her father and brother to aid him in his search.
She never stopped in her steady walk. "You know they are not at home."
He was shocked to remember it. "Never mind!" he cried, "I will go with
your authority. I will bring her back."
Still she did not waver in her walk. She spoke thickly out of her tears.
"You may go to find this woman who has worked for you so long; I will go
for Winifred."
"You must not come," he said almost harshly. "It is far too late; it is
far too wet."
He stopped to make her stop, but she only went on, getting much in
front. Then he ran up to her, laid his hand on her arm, and implored her
not to go.
There was nothing in his words or action that was precisely loverlike,
nor did such likeness occur to her; but in the restraint he put upon the
lover in him, his manner appeared to assume the confidence and ease of a
perfect friendship, and she, scarce noting much how he spoke or acted,
still felt that this advance of his gave her a new liberty to tell him
that she scorned his friendship, for she had something of that sort
seething in her mind concerning him. As to his request just then, she
merely said she would go on.
He was very urgent. "Then I will not go," he said, stopping again. "You
can't go without me, and if my going involves your going, it is better
not to go." He did not mean what he said, but he hoped to move her.
"You can go or stay as you think right," she said. "I am going to get
Winifred, poor lamb. I am not in the least afraid to go alone. I have
got a pistol in my belt."
So he went with her. They both walked fast. The road was wide and muddy,
and the night was very dark.
Trenholme noticed now for the first time that he walked in slippers; he
would as soon have thought of turning back on this account as he would
have thought of stopping if thorns and briars had beset his path. He
felt almost as if it were a dream that he was walking thus, serving the
woman he loved; but even as he brooded on the dreamlike strangeness of
it, his mind was doing its practical work. If Winifred and Mrs. Martha
were in the vehicle he had seen, what time they would gain while driving
on the road they would be apt to lose by their feebleness on the
mountain path, which he and Sophia could ascend so much more lightly.
Wherever their goal, and whatever their purpose, he was sanguine that he
would find and stop them before they joined the main party. He
communicated the grounds of this hope to his companion. His heart was
sore for his lady's tears. He had never before seen her weep. They had
passed the cemetery, and went forward now into the lonelier part of the
road. Then Trenholme thought of the warning Harkness had given him about
the drunkard's violence. The recollection made him hasten on, forgetting
that his speed was almost too great for a woman.
In the stir of events we seldom realise to the full the facts with which
we are dealing, certainly never perceive at first their full import.
Trenholme, however, after some minutes of tramping and thinking, felt
that he had reason for righteous indignation, and became wroth. He gave
vent to strictures upon superficiality of character, modern love of
excitement, and that silly egotism that, causing people to throw off
rightful authority, leaves them an easy prey to false teachers. He was
not angry with Winifred--he excepted her; but against those who were
leading her astray his words were harsh, and they would have flowed more
freely had he not found language inadequate to express his growing
perception of their folly.
When he had talked thus for some time Sophia answered, and he knew
instantly, from the tone of her voice, that her tears had dried
themselves.
"Are you and I able to understand the condition of heart that is not
only resigned, but eager to meet Him Whom they hope to meet--able so
fully to understand that we can judge its worth?"
He knew her face so well that he seemed to see the hint of sarcasm come
in the arching of her handsome eyebrows as she spoke.
"I fear they realise their hope but little," he replied. "The excitement
of some hysterical outbreak is what they seek."
"It seems to me that is an ungenerous and superficial view, especially
as we have never seen the same people courting hysterics before," she
said; but she did not speak as if she cared much which view he took.
Her lack of interest in his opinion, quite as much as her frank reproof,
offended him. They walked in silence for some minutes. Thunder, which
had been rumbling in the distance, came nearer and every now and then a
flash from an approaching storm lit up the dark land with a pale, vivid
light.
"Even setting their motives at the highest estimate," he said, "I do not
know that you, or even I, Miss Rexford, need hold ourselves incapable of
entering into them." This was not exactly what he would have felt if
left to himself, but it was what her upbraiding wrung from him. He
continued: "Even if we had the sure expectation for to-night that they
profess to have, I am of opinion that we should express our devotion
better by patient adherence to our ordinary duties, by doing all we
could for the world up to the moment of His appearing."
"Our ordinary duties!" she cried; "_they_ are always with us! I dare say
you and I might think that the fervour of this night's work had better
have been converted into good works and given to the poor; but our
opinion is not specially likely to be the true one. What do we know?
Walking here in the dark, we can't even see our way along this road."
It was an apt illustration, for their eyes were becoming so dazzled by
the occasional lightning that they could make no use of its brief flash,
or of the faint light of night that was mingled in the darkness of the
intervals.
Although he smarted under the slight she put upon him, he was weary of
opposing her, because he loved her. "I am sorry that nothing I say meets
with your approval," he said sadly.
It was lack of tact that made him use the personal tone when he and she
had so far to travel perforce together, and she, being excited and much
perturbed in spirit, had not the grace to answer wisely.
"Happily it matters little whether what you say pleases me or not."
She meant in earnestness to depreciate herself, and to exalt that higher
tribunal before which all opinions are arraigned; still, there was in
the answer a tinge of spite, telling him by the way that it did not
distress her to differ with him. It was not wonderful that Trenholme,
self-conscious with the love she did not guess at, took the words only
as a challenge to his admiration.
"Indeed you wrong me. It was long ago I proved the value I put upon your
advice by acting upon it in the most important decision of my life."
She had so long tacitly understood what her influence over him at that
time had been that she could not now be much affected by the avowal.
"Indeed, if you recklessly mistook the advice of a vain child for
wisdom, it is to be hoped that Providence has shaped your ends for you."
He did not understand her mood; he only thought of protesting his long
loyalty to her. "It is true," said he, "that Providence has done more
for me than I have done for myself; but I have always been glad to
attribute my coming here to your beneficent influence."
Her heart was like flint to him at that moment, and in his clumsiness he
struck sparks from it.
"Yet when I remember how you tried to explain to me then that the poor
parish in which you were working might be offering the nobler life-work
for you, I think that you were wiser than I. In their serious moments
people can judge best for themselves, Mr. Trenholme."
He had noticed that, in the rare times she addressed him by name, she
never used his big-sounding title of Principal. This little habit of
hers, differently read before, seemed now like a clue to guide him to
the meaning of her last remark, partly wrapped as it was in her
politeness. He was no dullard; once on the track of her thought, he soon
came up with her. In surprise he faced her insinuation squarely.
"You mean to tell me that you think I have not done well."
Half startled, she could think of no answer but the silence that gives
consent.
"Is it for myself or others I have done ill?" he asked.
"The world here speaks loudly of your exertions on its behalf; I have
never doubted the truth of its report."
"Then you consider that I myself am not what you would wish?" There was
neither anger nor graciousness in his tone. His mind, arrested, merely
sought to know further, and feeling had not yet arisen.
"You alarm me," she said coldly. "I had no thought of bringing these
questions upon myself."
But it was of moment to him to know her mind.
"I spoke inadvisedly," she added.
"Yet you spoke as you thought?" he asked.
Fast as they were walking, she could not but notice that they were in
the pine grove now, close by the river. Here the gale was loud,
reminding her afresh of the loneliness of the place, and, as she felt
the force of his question pressing upon her, all her energies rushed in
anger to her self-defence.
"Yes, I said what I thought; but I ask your pardon for any truthfulness.
Question me no further."
His stronger will was also roused. In bitterness of spirit he told her
that he had a right to know her full meaning. He plied her with
questions. When in steady tramp they came out on the open stretch of
road between the pines and the mountain, over the noise of the swollen
river he heard what she thought of him.