"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.

CHAPTER XIX.

The day came on which Bates was to go home. He had had a week's petulant

struggle with his malady since he last passed through the door of

Trenholme's house, but now he had conquered it for the hour, and even

his host perceived that it was necessary for him to make his journey

before the weather grew colder.

His small belongings packed, his morose good-byes said, Alec Trenholme

drove him to the railway station.

Both the brothers knew why it was that, in taking leave of them, Bates

hardly seemed to notice that he did so; they knew that, in leaving the

place, he was all-engrossed in the thought that he was leaving the girl,

Eliza Cameron, for ever; but he seemed to have no thought of saying to

her a second farewell.

The stern reserve which Bates had maintained on this subject had so

wrought on Alec's sympathy that he had consulted his brother as to the

advisability of himself making some personal appeal to Eliza, and the

day before Bates started he had actually gone on this mission. If it was

not successful, hardly deserved that it should be; for when he stood in

front of the girl, he could not conceal the great dislike he felt for

her, nor could he bring himself to plead on behalf of a man who he felt

was worth a thousand such as she. He said briefly that Bates was to

start for home the next day, and by such a train, and that he had

thought it might concern her to know it.

"Did he tell you to tell me?" asked Eliza, without expression.

"No, he didn't; and what's more, he never told me how you came here. You

think he's been telling tales about you! You can know now that he never

did; he's not that sort. I saw you at Turrifs, and when I saw you again

here I knew you. All I've got to say about _that_ is, that I, for one,

don't like that kind of conduct. You've half killed Bates, and this

winter will finish him off."

"That's not my fault," said Eliza.

"Oh? Well, that's for you to settle with yourself. I thought I'd come

and tell you what I thought about it, and that he was going. That's all

I've got to say."

"But I've something more to say, and you'll stay and hear it." She

folded her arms upon her breast, and looked at him, a contemptuous,

indignant Amazon. "You think Mr. Bates would thank you if you got me to

go away with him because I was afraid he'd die. You think"--growing

sarcastic--"that Mr. Bates wants me to go with him because _I'm sorry

for him_. I tell you, if I did what you're asking, Mr. Bates would be

the first to tell you to mind your own business and to send me about

mine."

She relapsed into cold silence for a minute, and then added, "If you

think Mr. Bates can't do his own love-making, you're vastly mistaken."

It did not help to soothe Alec that, when he went home, his brother

laughed at his recital.

"She is a coarse-minded person," he said. "I shall never speak to her

again."

This had happened the day before he drove Bates to the station.

It was a midday train. The railway platform was comparatively empty, for

the season of summer visitors was past. The sun glared with unsoftened

light on the painted station building, on the bare boards of the

platform, upon the varnished exterior of the passenger cars, and in,

through their windows, upon the long rows of red velvet seats. Alec

disposed Bates and his bundles on a seat near the stove at the end of

one of the almost empty cars. Then he stood, without much idea what to

say in the few minutes before the train started.

"Well," said he, "you'll be at Quebec before dark."

As they both knew this, Bates did not consider it worth an answer. His

only desire was that the train should be gone, so that he might be left

alone. He was a good deal oppressed by the idea of his indebtedness to

Alec, but he had already said all on that head that was in him to say;

it had not been much.

An urchin came by, bawling oranges. They looked small and sour, but, for

sheer lack of anything better to do, Alec went out of the car to buy a

couple. He was just stepping in again to present them when, to his

surprise, he became aware that one of the various people on the platform

was Eliza Cameron. When he caught sight of her she was coming running

from the other end of the train, her face red with exertion and her

dress disordered. She looked in at the windows, saw Bates, and entered

where Alec had intended to enter, he drawing aside, and she not even

seeing him.

The impetus of his intention carried Alec on to the outer porch of the

car, but his consideration for Bates caused him then to turn his back to

the door, and gaze down the long level track, waiting until Eliza should

come out again.

The prospect that met his gaze was one in which two parallel straight

lines met visibly in the region of somewhere. He remembered learning

that such two lines do, in truth, always meet in infinity. He wondered

drearily if this were a parable. As he saw his life, all that he desired

and all that was right seemed to lie in two tracks, side by side, but

for ever apart.

The advent of Eliza had sunk into less significance in his mind by the

time he heard the engine's warning bell. He turned and looked into the

car. There sat the man whom he had left, but not the same man; a new

existence seemed to have started into life in his thin sinewy frame, and

to be looking out through the weather-beaten visage. This man, fond and

happy, was actually addressing a glance of arch amusement at the girl

who, flushed and disconcerted, sought to busy herself by rearranging his

possessions. So quickly did it seem that Bates had travelled from one

extreme of life to another that Alec felt no doubt as to the kindly

triumph in the eye. Explanation he had none. He stepped off the jolting

car.

"Is she coming out?" he asked the conductor.

"No, she ain't," said a Chellaston man who stood near at hand. "She's

got her trunk in the baggage car, and she's got her ticket for Quebec,

she has. She's left the hotel, and left old Hutchins in the

lurch--that's what she's done."

The train was moving quicker. The conductor had jumped aboard. Alec was

just aware that all who were left on the platform were gossiping about

Eliza's departure when he was suddenly spurred into violent movement by

the recollection that he had absently retained in his possession Bates's

ticket and the change of the note given him to buy it with. To run and

swing himself on to the last car was a piece of vigorous action, but

once again upon the small rear porch and bound perforce for the next

station, he gave only one uncomfortable glance through the glass door

and turned once more to the prospect of the long level track. Who could

mention a railway ticket and small change to a man so recently

beatified?

The awkwardness of his position, a shyness that came over him at the

thought that they must soon see him and wonder why he was there,

suggested the wonder why he had desired that Bates should be happy; now

that he saw him opulent in happiness, as it appeared, above all other

men, he felt only irritation--first, at the sort of happiness that could

be derived from such a woman, and secondly, at the contrast between this

man's fulness and his own lack. What had Bates done that he was to have

all that he wanted?

It is an easier and less angelic thing to feel sympathy with sorrow than

with joy.

In a minute or two it was evident they had seen him, for he heard the

door slide and Bates came out on the little platform. He had gone into

the car feebly; he came out with so easy a step and holding himself so

erect, with even a consequential pose, that a gleam of derision shot

through the younger man's mind, even though he knew with the quick

knowledge of envy that it was for the sake of the woman behind the door

that the other was now making the most of himself.

Alec gave what he had to give; it was not his place to make comment.

Bates counted the change with a care that perhaps was feigned. If he

stood very straight, his hard hand trembled.

"I'm sorry ye were forced to come on with the cars; it's another added

to all the good deeds you've done by me." He had found a tongue now in

which he could be gracious.

"Oh, I shall soon get back," said Alec.

"I suppose ye've seen"--with attempted coolness--"that my young friend

here, Eliza Cameron, is going back with me."

"So I see." If his life had depended upon it, Alec could not have

refrained from a smile which he felt might be offensive, but it passed

unseen.

"When she saw ye out here, she asked me just to step out, for perhaps

ye'd be so kind as to take a message to a young lady she has a great

caring for--a Miss Rexford, as I understand."

"All right." Alec looked at the rails flying behind them, and stroked

his yellow moustache, and sighed in spite of himself.

"I'd like ye to tell Miss Rexford from me that we intend to be married

to-morrow--in the city of Quebec; but Sissy, she would like ye to say

that she'd have gone to say good-bye if she'd known her own mind sooner,

and that she prefairred to come" (he rolled the r in this "preferred"

with emphasis not too obvious) "--ye understand?"--this last a little

sharply, as if afraid that the word might be challenged.

Still looking upon the flying track, Alec nodded to show that he

challenged nothing.

"And she wishes it to be said," continued the stiff, formal Scot (there

was a consequential air about him now that was almost insufferable),

"that for all I've the intention in my mind to spend my life in the old

place, she thinks she'll very likely break me of it, and bring me to

live in more frequented parts in a year or two, when she'll hope to come

and see her friends again. 'Tis what she says, Mr. Trenholme" (and Alec

knew, from his tone, that Bates, even in speaking to him, had smiled

again that gloriously happy smile), "and of course I humour her by

giving her words. As to how that will be, I can't say, but"--with

condescension--"ye'd be surprised, Mr. Trenholme, at the hold a woman

can get on a man."

"Really--yes, I suppose so," Alec muttered inanely; but within he laid

control on himself, lest he should kick this man. Surely it would only

make the scales of fortune balance if Bates should have a few of his

limbs broken to pay for his luxury!

Alec turned, throwing a trifle of patronage into his farewell. Nature

had turned him out such a good-looking fellow that he might have spared

the other, but he was not conscious of his good looks just then.

"Well, Bates, upon my word I wish you joy. It's certainly a relief to

_me_ to think you will have someone to look after that cough of

yours, and see after you a bit when you have the asthma. I didn't think

you'd get through this winter alone, 'pon my word, I didn't; but I hope

that--Mrs. Bates will take good care of you."

It was only less brutal to hurl the man's weakness at him than it would

have been to hurl him off the train. Yet Alec did it, then jumped from

the car when the speed lessened.

He found himself left at a junction which had no interest for him, and

as there was a goods train going further on to that village where he had

stopped with Bates on their first arrival in these parts, he followed a

whim and went thither, in order to walk home by the road on which he had

first heard Sophia's voice in the darkness.

Ah, that voice--how clear and sweet and ringing it was! It was not

words, but tones, of which he was now cherishing remembrance. And he

thought of the face he now knew so well, hugged the thought of her to

his heart, and knew that he ought not to think of her.

Everywhere the trees hung out red and yellow, as flags upon a gala day.

He saw the maples on the mountain rise tier above tier, in feathery

scarlet and gold. About his feet the flowering weeds were blowing in one

last desperate effort of riotous bloom. The indigo birds, like flakes

from the sky above, were flitting, calling, everywhere, as they tarried

on their southward journey. Alec walked by the rushing river, almost

dazzled by its glitter, and felt himself to be, not only an unhappy, but

an ill-disposed man.

"And yet--and yet--" thought he, "if Heaven might grant her to me--":

and the heaven above him seemed like brass, and the wish like a prayer

gone mad.

CHAPTER XX.

Sophia had lived on through a few more quiet days; and now she knew that

the problem to which she had set herself was not that one pleasantly

remote from her inmost self, as to where her duty lay in helping on an

ideal social state, but another question, that beside the first seemed

wholly common and vulgar, one that tore from her all glamours of

romantic conception, so that she sat, as it were, in a chamber denuded

of all softness and beauty, face to face with her own pride. And so

lusty was this pride she had deemed half-dead that beside it all her

former enthusiasms seemed to fade into ghostly nothings.

At first she only determined, by all the chivalrous blood that ran in

her veins, to continue her kindness to the Trenholmes. She foresaw a

gust of unpopularity against them, and she saw herself defending their

interests and defying criticism. In this bright prospect the brothers

were humbly grateful and she herself not a little picturesque in

generous patronage. It was a delightful vision--for an hour; but because

she was nearer thirty than twenty it passed quickly. She touched it with

her knowledge of the world and it vanished. No; social life could not be

changed in a day; it would not be well that it should be. Much of the

criticism that would come in this case would be just; and the harsher

blows that would be dealt could not be stayed nor the unkindness defied;

even in the smaller affairs of life, he who would stand by the wronged

must be willing to suffer wrong. Was she ready for that? The longer she

meditated, the more surely she knew that Alec Trenholme loved her. And

when she had meditated a little longer--in spite of the indignation she

had felt at the bare suggestion--she knew that she loved him.

The fine theories of universal conduct in which she had been indulging

narrowed themselves down to her own life and to sternest, commonest

reality. Christianity is never a quality that can be abstracted from the

individual and looked upon as having duties of its own.

She fought against the knowledge that she liked him so well; the thought

of being his wife was the thought of a sacrifice that appalled her. A

convent cell would not have appeared to her half so far removed from all

that belongs to the pride of life; and lives there anyone who has so

wholly turned from that hydra-headed delight as not to shrink, as from

some touch of death, from fresh relinquishment? Her pulses stirred to

those strains of life's music that call to emulation and the manifold

pomps of honour; and, whatever might be the reality, in her judgment the

wife of Alec Trenholme must renounce all that element of interest in the

world for ever. Our sense of distinction poises its wings on the opinion

of men; and, as far as she had learnt this opinion, a saint or a nun

(she knew it now, although before she had not thought it) had honourable

part in life's pageantry, but not the wife of such as he. The prospect

in her eyes was barren of the hope that she might ever again have the

power to say to anyone, "I am better than thou."

It did not help her that at her initiation into the Christian life she

had formally made just this renunciation, or that she had thought that

before now she had ratified the vow. The meaninglessness of such

formulas when spoken is only revealed when deepening life reveals their

depths of meaning. She asked, in dismay, if duty was calling her to this

sacrifice by the voice of love in her heart. For that Love who carries

the crown of earthly happiness in his hand was standing on the threshold

of her heart like a beggar, and so terrible did his demand seem to her

that she felt it would be easy to turn him away.

"I," she said to herself, "I, who have preached to others, who have

discoursed on the vanity of ambition--this has come to teach me what

stuff my glib enthusiasm is made of. I would rather perjure myself,

rather die, rather choose any life of penance and labour, than yield to

my own happiness and his, and give up my pride."

She arrayed before her all possible arguments for maintaining the

existing social order; but conscience answered, "You are not asked to

disturb it very much." Conscience used an uncomfortable phrase--"You are

only asked to make yourself of no reputation." She cowered before

Conscience. "You are not even asked to make yourself unhappy," continued

Conscience; and so the inward monitor talked, on till, all wearied, her

will held out a flag of truce.

Most women would have thought of a compromise, would have, said, "Yes, I

will stoop to the man, but I will raise him to some more desirable

estate"; but such a woman was not Sophia Rexford. She scorned love that

would make conditions as much as she scorned a religion that could set

its own limits to service. For her there was but one question--Did

Heaven demand that she should acknowledge this love? If so, then the

all-ruling Will of Heaven must be the only will that should set bounds

to its demand.

In the distress of her mind, however, she did catch at one idea that

was, in kind, a compromise. She thought with relief that she could take

no initiative. If Alec Trenholme asked her to be his wife--then she

knew, at last she knew, that she would not dare to deny the voice at her

heart--in the light of righteousness and judgment to come, she would not

dare to deny it. But--ah, surely he would not ask! She caught at this

belief as an exhausted swimmer might catch at a floating spar, and

rested herself upon it. She would deal honourably with her conscience;

she would not abate her kindliness; she would give him all fair

opportunity; and if he asked, she would give up all--but she clung to

her spar of hope.

She did not realise the extent of her weakness, nor even suspect the

greatness of her strength.

CHAPTER XXI.

Robert Trenholme had not told his brother that he had made his

confession when he took tea with all the women. He knew that in such

cases difference and separation are often first fancied and then

created, by the self-conscious pride of the person who expects to be

slighted. He refrained from making this possible on Alec's part, and set

himself to watch the difference that would be made; and the interest of

all side-issues was summed up for him in solicitude to know what Miss

Rexford would do, for on that he felt his own hopes of her pardon to

depend.

When he found, the day after Bates's departure, that Alec must seek Miss

Rexford to give Eliza's message, he put aside work to go with him to

call upon her. He would hold to his brother; it remained to be seen how

she would receive them together.

That same afternoon Sophia went forth with Winifred and the little boys

to gather autumn leaves. When the two brothers came out of the college

gate they saw her, not twenty yards away, at the head of her little

troop. Down the broad road the cool wind was rushing, and they saw her

walking against it, outwardly sedate, with roses on her cheeks, her eyes

lit with the sunshine. The three stopped, and greeted each other after

the manner of civilised people.

Trenholme knew that the change that any member of the Rexford family

would put into their demeanour could not be rudely perceptible. He set

no store by her greeting, but he put his hand upon his brother's

shoulder and he said:

"This fellow has news that will surprise you, and a message to give.

Perhaps, if it is not asking too much, we may walk as far as may be

necessary to tell it, or," and he looked at her questioningly, "would

you like him to go and help you to bring down the high boughs?--they

have the brightest leaves."

"Will you come and help us gather red leaves?" said Sophia to Alec.

She did not see the gratitude in the elder brother's eyes, because it

did not interest her to look for it.

"And you?" she said to him.

"Ah, I" (he held up the cane with which he still eased the weight on one

foot), "I cannot walk so far, but perhaps I will come and meet you on

your return," and he pleased himself with the idea that she cared that

he should come.

He went into his house again. His heart, which had lately been learning

the habit of peace, just now learned a new lesson of what joy might be.

His future before him looked troublous, but the worst of his fears was

allayed. He had loved Sophia long; to-day his love seemed multiplied a

thousandfold. Hope crept to his heart like a darling child that had been

in disgrace and now was forgiven.

The others went on down the road.

Alec told his news about Eliza as drily as facts could be told. If he

touched his story at all with feeling, it was something akin to a sneer.

"She'll get him on to the track of prosperity now she's taken hold, Miss

Rexford," said he. "Mr. and Mrs. Bates will be having a piano before

long, and they will drive in a 'buggy.' That's the romance of a

settler's life in Canada."

When they had left that subject Sophia said, "Now he is gone, are you

going away?"

"Yes; in a day or two. I've fixed nothing yet, because Robert seems to

have some unaccountable objection to getting rid of me just at present;

but I shall go."

"It is very fine weather," she said.

"There is too much glare," said he.

"You are surely hard to please."

"What I call fine weather is something a man has something in common

with. If one were a little chap again, just leaving school for a

holiday, this would be a glorious day, but--what _man_ has spirits equal

to" (he looked above) "this sort of thing."

His words came home to Sophia with overwhelming force, for, as they went

on, touching many subjects one after another, she knew with absolute

certainty that her companion had not the slightest intention of being

her suitor. If the sunny land through which she was walking had been a

waste place, in which storm winds sighed, over which storm clouds

muttered, it would have been a fitter home for her heart just then. She

saw that she was to be called to no sacrifice, but she experienced no

buoyant relief. He was going away; and she was to be left. She had not

known herself when she thought she wanted him to go--she was miserable.

Well, she deserved her misery, for would she not be more miserable if

she married him? Had she not cried and complained? And now the door of

this renunciation was not opened to her--he was going away, and she was

to be left.

Very dull and prosaic was the talk of these two as they walked up the

road to that pine grove where the river curved in, and they turned back

through that strip of wilderness between road and river where it was

easy to be seen that the brightest leaf posies were to be had.

Nearest the pines was a group of young, stalwart maple trees, each of a

different dye--gold, bronze, or red. It was here that they lingered, and

Alec gathered boughs for the children till their hands were full. The

noise of the golden-winged woodpecker was in the air, and the call of

the indigo bird.

Sophia wandered under the branches; her mind was moving always. She was

unhappy. Yes, she deserved that; but he--he was unhappy too; did he

deserve it? Then she asked herself suddenly if she had no further duty

toward him than to come or go at his call. Did she dare, by all that

was true, to wreck his life and her own because she would not stoop to

compel the call that she had feared?

Humility does not demand that we should think ill of ourselves, but that

we should not think of ourselves at all. When Sophia lost sight of

herself she saw the gate of Paradise. After that she was at one again

with the sunshine and the breeze and the birds, with the rapture of the

day and the land, and she ceased to think why she acted, or whether it

was right or wrong. The best and worst hours of life are in themselves

irresponsible, the will hurled headlong forward by an impulse that has

gathered force before.

And what did she do? The first thing that entered her mind--it mattered

not what to her. The man was in her power, and she knew it.

When the children's arms were full and they had gone on homeward down a

pathway among lower sumac thickets, Alec turned and saw Sophia, just as

stately, just as quiet, as he had ever seen her. So they two began to

follow.

Her hand had been cut the day before, and the handkerchief that bound it

had come off. Demurely she gave it to him to be fastened. Now the hand

had been badly cut, and when he saw that he could not repress the

tenderness of his sympathy.

"How could you have done it?" he asked, filled with pain, awed,

wondering.

She laughed, though she did not mean to; she was so light-hearted, and

it was very funny to see how quickly he softened at her will.

"Do not ask me to tell you how low we Rexfords have descended!" she

cried, "and yet I will confess I did it with the meat axe. I ought not

to touch such a thing, you think! Nay, what can I do when the loin is

not jointed and the servant has not so steady a hand as I? Would you

have me let papa grumble all dinner-time--the way that you men do, you

know?"

The little horror that she had painted for him so vividly did its work.

With almost a groan he touched the hand with kisses, not knowing what he

did; and looking up, frightened of her as far as he could be conscious

of fear, he saw, not anger, but a face that fain would hide itself, and

he hid it in his embrace.

"Oh," cried he, "what have I done?"

Stepping backward, he stood a few paces from her, his arms crossed, the

glow on his face suddenly transcended by the look with which a man might

regard a crime he had committed.

"What is it?" she cried, wickedly curious. The maple tree over her was a

golden flame and her feet were on a carpet of gold. All around them the

earth was heaped with palm-like sumac shrubs, scarlet, crimson,

purple--dyed as it were, with blood.

"What have I done?" He held out his hands as if they had been stained.

"I have loved you, I have dared, without a thought, _without a thought

for you_, to walk straight into all the--the--heaven of it."

Then he told her, in a word, that about himself which he thought she

would despise; and she saw that he thought she heard it for the first

time.

Lifting her eyebrows in pretty incredulity. "Not really?" she said.

"It is true," he cried with fierce emphasis.

At that she looked grave.

He had been trying to make her serious; but no sooner did he see her

look of light and joy pass into a look of thought than he was filled

with that sort of acute misery which differs from other sorrows as acute

pain differs from duller aches.

"My darling," he said, his heart was wrung with the words--"my darling,

if I have hurt you, I have almost killed myself." (Man that he was, he

believed that his life must ebb in this pain.)

"Why?" she asked. "How?"

He went a step nearer her, but as it came to him every moment more

clearly that he had deceived her, as he realised what he had gained and

what he now thought to forego, his voice forsook him in his effort to

speak. Words that he tried to say died on his lips.

But she saw that he had tried to say that because of it she should not

marry him.

He tried again to speak and made better work of it. "This that has come

to us--this love that has taken us both--you will say it is not enough

to--to--"

She lifted up her face to him. Her cheeks were flushed; her eyes were

full of light. "This that has come to us, Alec--" (At his name he came

nearer yet) "this that has taken us both" (she faltered) "is enough."

He came near to her again; he took her hands into his; and all that he

felt and all that she felt, passed from his eyes to hers, from hers to

his.

He said, "It seems like talking in church, but common things must be

said and answered, and--Sophie--what will your father say?"

"I don't know," she said; but happiness made her playful; she stroked

the sleeve of his coat, as if to touch it were of more interest to her.

"I will give him my fortune to make up, and come to you penniless."

"He won't consent," he urged.

There was still a honeyed carelessness in her voice and look. "At the

great age to which I have attained," said she, "fathers don't

interfere."

"What can I do or say," he said, "to make you consider?" for it seemed

to him that her thoughts and voice came from her spellbound in some

strange delight, as the murmur comes from a running stream, without

meaning, except the meaning of all beautiful and happy things in God's

world.

"What must I consider?"

"The shop--the trade."

"When you were a very young butcher, and first took to it, did you like

it?"

"I wasn't squeamish," he said; and then he told her about his father.

After that he philosophised a little, telling something of the best that

he conceived might be if men sought the highest ideal in lowly walks of

life, instead of seeking to perform imperfectly some nobler business. It

was wonderful how much better he could speak to her than to his brother,

but Sophia listened with such perfect assent that his sense of honour

again smote him.

"Art thinking of it all, love?" he said.

"I was wondering what colour of aprons you wore, and if I must make

them."

They began to walk home, passing now under the sumac's palm-like canopy,

and they saw the blue gleam of the singing river through red thickets.

Soon they came to a bit of open ground, all overgrown with bronzed

bracken, and maidenhair sere and pink, and blue-eyed asters and

golden-rod. So high and thick were the breeze-blown weeds that the only

place to set the feet was a very narrow path. Here Sophia walked first,

for they could not walk abreast, and as Alec watched her threading her

way with light elastic step, he became afraid once more, and tried to

break through her happy tranquillity.

"Dear love," he said, "I hope--"

"What now?" said she, for his tone was unrestful.

He trampled down flowers and ferns as he awkwardly tried to gain her

side.

"You know, dear, I have a sort of feeling that I've perhaps just

fascinated and entranced you--so that you are under a spell and don't

consider, you know."

It was exactly what he meant, and he said it; but how merrily she

laughed! Her happy laughter rang; the river laughed in answer, and the

woodpecker clapped applause.

But Alec blushed very much and stumbled upon the tangled weeds.

"I only meant--I--I didn't mean--That is the way I feel fascinated by

you, you know; and I suppose it might be the same--"

They walked on, she still advancing a few paces because she had the

path, he retarded because, in his attempt to come up with her, he was

knee-deep in flowers. But after a minute, observing that he was hurt in

his mind because of her laughter, she mocked him, laughing again, but

turned the sunshine of her loving face full upon him as she did so.

"Most fascinating and entrancing of butchers!" quoth she.

With that as she entered another thicket of sumac trees, he caught and

kissed her in its shade.

* * * * *

And there was one man who heard her words and saw his act, one who took

in the full meaning of it even more clearly than they could, because

they in their transport had not his clearness of vision. Robert

Trenholme, coming to seek them, chanced in crossing this place, thick

set with shrubs, to come near them unawares, and seeing them, and having

at the sight no power in him to advance another step or speak a word, he

let them pass joyously on their way towards home. It was not many

moments before they had passed off the scene, and he was left the only

human actor in that happy wilderness where flower and leaf and bird, the

blue firmament on high and the sparkling river, rejoiced together in the

glory of light and colour.

Trenholme crossed the path and strode through flowery tangle and woody

thicket like a giant in sudden strength, snapping all that offered to

detain his feet. He sought, he knew not why, the murmur and the motion

of the river; and where young trees stood thickest, as spearsmen to

guard the loneliness of its bank, he sat down upon a rock and covered

his face, as if even from the spirits of solitude and from his own

consciousness he must hide. He thought of nothing: his soul within him

was mad.

He had come out of his school not half an hour before, rejoicing more

than any schoolboy going to play in the glorious weather. For him there

was not too much light on the lovely autumn landscape; it was all a part

of the peace that was within him and without, of the God he knew to be

within him and without--for, out of his struggle for righteousness in

small things, he had come back into that light which most men cannot see

or believe. Just in so far as a man comes into that light he ceases to

know himself as separate, but knows that he is a part of all men and all

things, that his joy is the joy of all men, that their pain is his;

therefore, as Trenholme desired the fulfilment of his own hopes, he

desired that all hope in the world might find fruition. And because this

day he saw--what is always true if we could but see it--that joy is a

thousandfold greater than pain, the glory of the autumn seemed to him

like a psalm of praise, and he gave thanks for all men.

Thus Trenholme had walked across the fields, into these groves--but now,

as he sat by the river, all that, for the time, had passed away, except

as some indistinct memory of it maddened him. His heart was full of rage

against his brother, rage too against the woman he loved; and with this

rage warred most bitterly a self-loathing because he knew that his anger

against them was unjust. She did not know, she had no cause to know,

that she had darkened his whole life; but--what a _fool_ she was! What

companionship could that thoughtless fellow give her? How he would drag

her down! And _he_, too, could not know that he had better have killed

his brother than done this thing. But any woman would have done for

Alec; for himself there was only this one--only this one in the whole

world. He judged his brother; any girl with a pretty face and a good

heart would have done for that boisterous fellow--while for himself--"Oh

God," he said, "it is hard."

Thus accusing and excusing these lovers, excusing and again accusing

himself for his rage against them, he descended slowly into the depth of

his trouble--for man, in his weakness, is so made that he can come at

his worst suffering only by degrees. Yet when he had made this descent,

the hope he had cherished for months and years lay utterly overthrown;

it could not have been more dead had it been a hundred years in dying.

He had not known before how dear it was, yet he had known that it was

dearer than all else, except that other hope with which we do not

compare our desires for earthly good because we think it may exist

beside them and grow thereby.

There are times when, to a man, time is not, when the life of years is

gathered into indefinite moments; and after, when outward things claim

again the exhausted mind, he wonders that the day is not further spent.

And Trenholme wondered at the length of that afternoon, when he observed

it again and saw that the sun had not yet sunk low, and as he measured

the shadows that the bright trees cast athwart the moving water, he was

led away to think the thoughts that had been his when he had so lightly

come into those gay autumn bowers. A swallow skimmed the wave with

burnished wing; again he heard the breeze and the rapid current. They

were the same; the movement and music were the same; God was still with

him; was he so base as to withhold the thanksgiving that had been

checked half uttered in his heart by the spring of that couchant sorrow?

_Then_ in the sum of life's blessings he had numbered that hope of his,

and _now_ he had seen the perfect fruition of that hope in joy. It was

not his own,--but was it not much to know that God had made such joy,

had given it to man? Had he in love of God no honest praise to give for

other men's mercies? none for the joy of this man who was his brother?

Across the murmur of the river he spoke words so familiar that they came

to clothe the thought--

"We do give Thee most humble and hearty thanks for all Thy goodness

and--loving kindness--to us--and to _all men_."

And although, as he said them, his hand was clenched so that his fingers

cut the palm, yet, because he gave thanks, Robert Trenholme was nearer

than he knew to being a holy man.

THE END.

THE ONE GOOD GUEST.

A NOVEL. By L.B. Walford

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power."--PROVIDENCE JOURNAL.

"This is a delightful romance ... a charming description of Welsh

country life, with quaint and picturesque studies."--BOSTON TRAVELLER.

DORRIE. By William Tirebuck,

Author of "St. Margaret," "Sweetheart Gwen," ETC.

Second Edition. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $1.50

O.

"A really notable novel. Dramatic and profoundly pathetic. A

psychological study of great value."--GRAPHIC.

"Mr. Tirebuck is a novelist of undoubted courage and fertility of

imagination. The story is interesting beyond all question. He

unquestionably knows how to draw a picture."--ATHENÆUM.

"'Dorrie' is an extremely touching and realistic picture of Liverpool

life. Mr. Tirebuck writes vigorously, and his story is certainly one of

profound human interest."--G. BARNETT SMITH, in _The Academy_.

"Mr. Tirebuck has the root of the matter in him. 'Dorrie' is really a

strong piece of work--a decidedly interesting story."--SPECTATOR.

"Mr. Tirebuck has a real gift of story-telling to begin with. And he has

other greater qualities than that.... His latest novel possesses a broad

human interest as a really imaginative study of life."--RICHARD LE

GALLIENNE, in _The Star_.

"This story possesses unusual powers of attraction, and gives

unmistakable evidence of genius."--MANCHESTER EXAMINER.

"She (Dorrie) seems to myself the most absolutely original, and, in her

way, the most taking figure in recent fiction. She is unique. To one

reader at least she remains among the friends of fiction, the beloved of

dreams."--ANDREW LANG, _At the Sign of the Ship_.