That afternoon Alec Trenholme had essayed to bring his friend John Bates
to Chellaston. Bates was in a very feeble state, bowed with asthma, and
exhausted by a cough that seemed to be sapping his life. Afraid to keep
him longer in the lodging they had taken in Quebec, and in the stifling
summer heat that was upon, the narrow streets of that city, but
uncertain as to what length of journey he would be able to go, Alec
started without sending further notice.
As the hours of travel wore on, Bates's dogged pluck and perseverance
had to give way to his bodily weakness, but they had reached a station
quite near Chellaston before he allowed himself to be taken out of the
train and housed for the night in a railway inn. In his nervous state
the ordeal of meeting fresh friends seemed as great, indeed, as that
involved in the remaining journey. So it came to pass that at dusk on
that same evening, Alec Trenholme, having put his friend to bed, joined
the loungers on the railway platform in front of the inn, and watched
lightning vibrate above the horizon, and saw its sheet-like flames light
up the contour of Chellaston Mountain. He did not know what hill it was;
he did not know precisely where he was in relation to his brother's
home; but he soon overheard the name of the hill from two men who were
talking about it and about the weather.
"How far to Chellaston?" asked Alec.
They told him that it was only nine miles by road, but the railway went
round by a junction.
Alec began to consider the idea of walking over, now that he had
disposed of Bates for the night.
"Is the storm coming this way?" he said.
The man who had first answered him pointed to another. "This gentleman,"
he said, "has just come from Chellaston."
As the remark did not seem to be an answer to his question about the
weather, Alec waited to hear its application. It followed.
The first man drew a little nearer. "He's been telling us that the
Adventists--that means folks that are always expecting the end of the
world--all about Chellaston believe the end's coming to-night."
Alec made an exclamation. It was a little like hearing that some one
sees a ghost at your elbow. The idea of proximity is unpleasant, even to
the incredulous. "Why to-night?" he asked.
"Well, I'll say this much of the notion's come true," said the native of
Chellaston hastily--"it's awful queer weather--not that I believe it
myself," he added.
"Has the weather been so remarkable as to make them think that?" asked
Alec.
"'Tain't the weather _made_ them think it. He only said the weather
weren't unlike as if it were coming true." As the first man said this,
he laughed, to explain that he had nothing to do with the tale or its
credence, but the very laugh betrayed more of a tendency to dislike the
idea than perfect indifference to it would have warranted.
In defiance of this laugh the Chellaston man made further explanation.
He said the religious folks said it was clearly written in the Book of
Daniel (he pronounced it Dannel); if you made the days it talks of
years, and the weeks seven years, the end must come about this time. At
first folks had calculated it would be 1843, but since then they had
found they were thirty years out somehow.
"That would make it this year," agreed the first man. Some others that
had gathered round laughed in chorus. They vented some bad language to;
but the Chellaston man, excited with his tale, went on.
"All the Advent folks believe that. They believe all the good folks will
be caught up in the air; and after that they're to come back, and the
world will be just like the Garden of Eden for a thousand years."
He was casting pearls before swine, for some of his hearers chanted
gibes. "Is that so?" they sang, to the notes of a response in Church
music.
Night had closed in black about them. All on the platform had come
together in close group. The wind-blown light of the station lamp was on
their faces. In the distance the smouldering storm rumbled and flashed.
"All religious folks believe that," continued the speaker, a little
scornfully, "and the Advents think it'll be now; but old Cameron we've
had in Chellaston for a year, he tells them it'll be to-night."
Alec Trenholme had by this time received his brother's letters. "A
year!" interrupted he almost fiercely. "Didn't he come in January?"
The narrator drew in the horns of his exaggeration. "D'ye know all about
him, for there's no use telling if you do?"
"I only thought you might be talking about an old man heard went there
then."
"He a'most died, or did really, somewhere below Quebec; and then he got
up and preached and prayed, and his folks wouldn't keep him, so he
wandered everywhere, and a kind young man we have at our place took him
in and keeps him. When he was in the other world he heard the Judgment
would happen to-night. Would that be the same man you know?"
"It will be the same man."
"Did you know his people?" asked the other curiously.
But Alec had no thought of being questioned. He brought the speaker back
to his place as historian, and he, nothing loth, told of the intended
meeting on the mountain, and of the white ascension robes, in his
ignorant, blatant fashion, laying bare the whole pathetic absurdity of
it.
Two ribald listeners, who had evidently been in some choir, paced arm in
arm, singing the responses to the Litany in melodramatic fashion, except
when their voices were choked with loud laughter at their own wit.
Pushed by the disagreeableness of these surroundings, and by keen
interest in the old man who had once visited him, Alec decided on the
walk. The mountain was nearer than the village; he hoped to reach it in
time. He was told to keep on the same road till he came to the river, to
follow its bank for about a mile, and when he saw the buildings of a
farm just under the hill, to turn up a lane which would lead him by the
house to the principal ascent. He walked out into the night.
At first he was full of thoughts, but after walking a while, fatigue and
monotony made him dull. His intelligence seemed to dwell now in his
muscles rather than in his brain. His feet told him on what sort of a
road he was walking; by his fatigue he estimated, without conscious
thought, how far he had walked.
When he had gone for nearly two hours the storm had come so much nearer
that the lightning constantly blinded his eyes. He heard now the rushing
of the river, and, as he turned into the road by its side, he saw the
black hill looming large. Nothing but the momentum of a will already
made up kept his intention turned to the climb, so unpropitious was the
time, so utterly lonely the place. As it was, with quiescent mind and
vigorous step, he held on down the smooth road that lay beside the
swollen river.
Some way farther, when the water had either grown quieter or his ear
accustomed to the sound, human voices I became audible, approaching on
the road. Perhaps they might have been two or three hundred yards away
when he first heard them, and from that moment his mind, roused from its
long monotony, became wholly intent upon those who were drawing near.
It was a woman's voice he heard, and before he could see her in the
least, or even hear her footsteps in the soft mud, the sense of her
words came to him. She was, evidently speaking under the influence of
excitement, not loudly, but with that peculiar quality of tone which
sometimes makes a female voice carry further than is intended. She was
addressing some companion; she was also walking fast.
"There _was_ a time when I thought you were ambitious, and would
therefore do great things."
There was an exquisite edge of disdain in her tone that seemed to make
every word an insult that would have had power, Alec thought, to wither
any human vanity on which it might fall.
Some reply, she received--he could not hear it--and she went on with
such intensity in her voice that her words bore along the whole current
of Alec's thought with them, though they came to him falling out of
darkness, without personality behind them.
"We may _call_ it ambition when we try to climb trees, but it is not
really so for us if we once had mountain-tops for our goal."
Again came a short reply, a man's voice so much lower in key that again
he could not hear; and then:
"Yes, I have wasted years in tree climbing, more shame to me; but even
when I was most willing to forget the highest, I don't think a little
paltry prosperity in the commonplace atmosphere of a colony would have
tempted me to sell my birthright."
The man she was rating answered, and the clear voice came proudly again:
"You have at least got the pottage that pleases you--you are a success
in this Canadian world."
Just then the soft, wet sound of feet tramping in mud came to him, and
apparently the sound of his own feet was heard also, for the talking
stopped until he had passed them. He discerned their figures, but so
dimly he could hardly have told they were man and woman had he not known
it before by their voices. They were walking very fast, and so was he.
In a moment or two they were out of sight, and he had ceased to hear
their footsteps. Then he heard them speak again, but the wind blew their
words from him.
The tones, the accent, of the woman who had been speaking, told that she
was what, in good old English, used to be called a lady. Alec Trenholme,
who had never had much to do with well-bred women, was inclined to see
around each a halo of charm; and now, after his long, rough exile, this
disposition was increased in him tenfold. Here, in night and storm, to
be roused from the half lethargy of mechanical exercise by the
modulations of such a voice, and forced by the strength of its feeling
to be, as it were, a confidant--this excited him not a little. For a few
moments he thought of nothing but the lady and what he had heard,
conjecturing all things; but he did not associate her with the poor
people he had been told were to meet that night upon the mountain.
Roused by the incident, and alert, another thought came quickly,
however. He was getting past the large black hill, but the lane turning
to it he had not found. Until he now tried with all his might to see, he
did not fully know how difficult seeing was.
The storm was not near enough to suggest danger, for there was still
more than a minute between each flash and its peal. As light rain
drifted in his face, he braced himself to see by the next flash and
remember what he saw; but when it came he only knew that it reflected
light into the pools on the road in front of him, and revealed a black
panorama of fence and tree, field and hill, that the next moment, was
all so jumbled in his mind that he did not know where to avoid the very
puddles he had seen so clearly, and splashed on through them, with no
better knowledge of his way, and eyes too dazzled to see what otherwise
they would have seen. In this plight he did not hesitate, but turned and
ran after the two he had met, to ask his way, thinking, as he did so,
that he must have already passed the lane.
With some effort he caught them up. They must have heard him coming, for
their voices were silent as he approached. He asked for the lane to
Cooper's Farm, which he had been told was the name of the house at the
foot of the mountain path. They both hesitated in their walk. The man,
who ought to have answered, seemed, for some reason, suddenly dumb.
After waiting impatiently, the lady took upon herself to reply. She said
they had not yet reached the turning to the farm. She remarked that they
were going to the same place.
Then they went on again, and he, too, walked quickly, supposing that he
could soon pass them and get in front. It is not the matter of a moment,
however, to pass people who are walking at a rate of speed almost equal
to one's own. He had the awkwardness of feeling, that, whether he would
or no, he was obliged to intrude upon them. He noticed they were not
walking near together; but when one is tramping and picking steps as
best one can in mud that is hidden in darkness, it is, perhaps, more
natural that two people on a wide road should give one another a wide
berth. At any rate, for a minute all three were making their way through
puddles and over rough places in silence. Then, when Alec thought he had
got a few paces in advance, he heard the lady speak again, and of
himself.
"Did you think you knew that man?"
There was no answer. Alec felt angry with her companion that he should
dare to sulk so obviously. After a minute or two more of fast walking,
she said again:
"I can't think where he has gone to. Do you see him anywhere?"
To this again there was no answer. Alec naturally went the quicker that
he might get out of hearing. As he did so he wondered much that his
fellow-travellers went so fast, or rather that the lady did, for she,
although some way behind, seemed to keep very near to him.
On they went in silence for ten minutes more, when the lady again took
up her reproachful theme. Her voice was quieter now, but amid the
harmonious sounds of wind and river he still heard it distinctly. The
clear enunciation of her words seemed to pierce through the baffling
noises of the night as a ray of light pierces through darkness, albeit
that there was excitement in her tones, and her speech was, interspersed
with breathless pauses.
"I have been rude; but you insisted upon my rudeness, now you are
offended by it. So be it--let me say something else! I don't much
believe now in all the sentiment that used to seem so noble to me about
forgetting oneself. No thoughtful person _can_ forget himself, and no
candid person says he has done it. What we need is to think _more_ of
ourselves--to think so much of ourselves that all aims but the highest
are beneath us--are impossible to our own dignity. What we chiefly need
is ambition."
She stopped to take breath. It seemed to Alec she came near enough to
see him as she continued. He could think of nothing, however, but what
she was saying. He felt instinctively that it was because of haste and
some cause of excitement, not in spite of them, that this lady could
speak as she now did.
"Christianity appeals to self-regard as the motive of our best action,"
she went on, giving out her words in short sentences, "so there must be
a self-regard which is good--too good to degrade itself to worldly
ends; too good even to be a part of that amalgam--the gold of
unselfishness and the alloy of selfishness--which makes the _ordinary_
motive of the _ordinary_ good man."
Her voice seemed to vibrate with scorn on the emphasized words.
"If we desired to live nearer heaven--" she said, and then she stopped.
Alec turned perforce to tell her, what she must now perceive, that he
was still close to them; but this impulse was checked by a sudden
thought. Was she not addressing himself? Was there another man now with
her?
He stopped, looked backward, listened. He was quite alone with the lady,
who went past him now, only looking, as she walked, to see why he was
tarrying. In his fierce young loyalty to her he took for granted,
without question or proof, that her escort had deserted her in revenge
for her disdain. He would willingly have gone back to fetch him up, but
the impossibility of finding a man who did not wish to be found, the
impossibility, as it seemed to him, of letting her go further alone, the
boorishness of calling after her--all this constrained him to follow. He
ran to make his communication gently, and, as he ran, courage to make it
failed him. He thought of her as delicately accustomed to incessant
protection. At the thought of letting her know that she was telling her
thoughts to a stranger, that she was alone at such hour and place with
him, his throat swelled. He hated to speak words that would be so
hateful to her; and when he came by her side breathless, and she spoke
to him again, he walked on, waiting till she should stop, trying to
formulate what he had to say, listening and watching intently for some
sign of the recreant. Again speaking as though she must unburden her
mind, she turned into the lane. Over its fences he peered down the dark
main road, but neither in flash nor interval could the other man be
seen. He had not the slightest notion what the lady was saying now;
lofty philosophy or practical sarcasm it might be, it was all lost in
his exaggerated idea of what her fear and dismay would be when he spoke.
Before he had a chance to speak, however, he saw, in dark outline, the
building of the farm to which he supposed her to be going. It would be a
thousand times better to conduct her in silence to the door, which was
now so near. To tell her before could serve no end, for even if she
should wish to return to seek her late companion she could there obtain
an escort. So, with feeling of guiltiness in the part he was acting, and
in the surly silence he assumed, Alec let her lead up the lane she must
know better than he. Her previous speeches, which he had followed so
closely, were only remembered now to give food for conjecture as to who
she might be and what relation she held to her late companion. The
interest in his own journey and its extraordinary object were lost for
the time in the excitement of his knight-errantry.
He was astonished to see that the house, as they neared it, showed no
sign of life and light. The lady, whether inmate or guest, must surely
be expected; but the very roofs of the house and huge barns seemed to
droop in slumber, so black was the whole place and closely shut. Alec
was looking out for the house gate in order to step forward and open it,
when, to his utter surprise, he saw that the lady with haste passed it,
and went on toward the hill.
He stopped with hand on the gate and called her.
"What is the matter?" she asked, checking her walk. "Are you ill? What
is it?"
He supposed that his strange voice would tell her all, but, although she
was evidently puzzled, to his further astonishment, she did not realise
that he was a stranger.
"Why do you speak like that?" she asked. And she talked on rapidly about
some waggon she expected to find at the foot of the path. She went on,
in fact, as if unable to endure the loss of time; and he, thinking of
the waggon and waggoner as a further point of safety for her, ran after.
In a minute they both came out of the lane on a small common. Here were
two horses tied under a tree and an open waggon with its shafts laid
down.
"Call the man," she said.
To Alec's call a man came sleepily from a small barn that was near. He
said he had brought about a dozen women in the waggon, and they had gone
up the hill. Impatiently she demanded of him how long it was since they
had started to walk, and heard it was about a quarter of an hour. She
went on once more, with what seemed to Alec incredible speed. But this
time he gave way to no further indecision. Where she had darted under
the trees he followed in her path.
They were just under the covert of the first trees on a steep footpath
when he stopped her, and above him she turned, listening. The scent of
moss and fern and overhanging leaf was sweet. So perfect a woodland
bower was the place, so delicate did the lady seem to his imagination,
that he wished he could tell his concern for her alarm and readiness to
devote himself to her cause. But when he saw her shrink from him, he
could only stand awkwardly, tell her in a few clumsy words that he and
the other man had changed places, he did not know how, and he had
thought to take her to the farm.
"Your voice is very like his," she said, looking at him strangely.
But he now knew certainly, what for the last hour had seemed to him
almost impossible, that in very truth the religious assembly was to take
place that night; and the thought of it, and of the strange excitement
with which others had gone before them on that same path took from Alec,
and, he supposed, from the lady also, the power to give much
consideration to their own strange encounter. When he had told her of
the time he had seen old Cameron at prayer in the lone wintry fields,
and how far he had just walked to see him again in the strange
conditions of to-night, they climbed on together.