CHAPTER XIV.
In the latter part of that day Bates suffered a fierce attack of his malady. Everyone in Trenholme's house, including the master himself on crutches, became agile in their desire to alleviate the suffering, and he received their ministrations with that civility which denoted that, had conventionality allowed, he would not have received them; for to fling all that is given him at the heads of the givers is undoubtedly the conduct that nature suggests to a man in pain. Having need, however, of some help, Bates showed now, as before, an evident preference for Alec as an attendant, a preference due probably to the fact that Alec never did anything for him that was not absolutely necessary, and did that only in the most cursory way. When Alec entered his room that night to see, as he cheerfully remarked, whether he was alive or not, Bates turned his face from the wall.
"I think it right to tell ye," he began, and his tone and manner were so stiff that the other knew something painful was coming, "I think it right to tell ye that Eliza Cameron is alive and well. I have seen her."
In his annoyance to think a meeting had occurred Alec made an exclamation that served very well for the surprise that Bates expected.
"Her father," continued Bates, "was decently buried, unknown to me, on his own land, as is the custom in those parts of the country. The girl was the person ye saw get up from the coffin—the one that ye were so frightened of."
This last word of explanation was apparently added that he might be assured Alec followed him, and the listener, standing still in the half-darkened room, did not just then feel resentment for the unnecessary insult. He made some sound to show that he heard.
"Then"—stiffly—"she took the train, and she has been living here ever since, a very respectable young woman, and much thought of. I'm glad to have seen her."
"Well?"
"I thought it right to tell ye, and I'm going home to-morrow or next day."
That was evidently all that was to be told him, and Alec refrained from all such words as he would like to have emitted. But when he was going dumbly out of the room, Bates spoke again.
"Ye're young yet; when ye feel inclined to give your heart to any young thing that you've a caring for, gie it as on the altar of God, and not for what ye'll get in return, and if ye get in answer what ye're wanting, thank God for a free gift."
Then Alec knew that Sissy had been unkind to Bates.
The night being yet early, he willingly recognised an obligation to go and tell Miss Rexford that their mutual solicitude had in some way been rendered needless. It was easy for him to find the lady he desired to see, for while the weather was still warm it was the habit in Chellaston to spend leisure hours outside the house walls rather than in, and Alec Trenholme had already learned that at evening in the Rexford household the father and brother were often exhausted by their day's work and asleep, and the mother occupied by the cribs of her little ones. He found the house, as usual, all open to the warm dry autumn evening, doors and windows wide. The dusk was all within and without, except that, with notes of a mother's lullaby, rays of candle light fell from the nursery window. As his feet brushed the nearer grass, he dimly saw Miss Rexford rise from a hammock swung on the verandah, where she had been lounging with Winifred. She stood behind the verandah railing, and he in the grass below, and they talked together on this subject that had grown, without the intention of either, to be so strong a bond of interest between them. Here it was that Alec could give vent to the pity and indignation which he could not express to the man whose sufferings excited these emotions.
In spite of this visit Sophia sought Eliza again the next day. As she entered the hotel Mr. Hutchins begged a word with her in his little slate-painted office, saying that the young housekeeper had not been like herself for some time, and that he was uneasy, for she made a friend of no one.
"Are you afraid of losing her?" asked Miss Rexford coldly, with slight arching of her brows.
He replied candidly that he had no interest in Eliza's joys or sorrows, except as they might tend to unsettle her in her place. Having, by the use of his own wits, discovered her ability, he felt that he had now a right to it.
Sophia went upstairs, as she was directed, to Eliza's bedroom on the highest storey, and found her there, looking over piles of freshly calendered house linen. The room was large enough, and pleasant—a better bedroom than Sophia or her sisters at present possessed. Eliza was apparently in high spirits. She received her guest with almost loud gaiety.
"What do you think's happened now, Miss Sophia?" cried she. "You remember what I told you about Mrs. Glass? Well, there's two young gentlemen come to the house here yesterday morning, and she's entertained them before at her house in town, so they struck up great friends with her here, and yesterday she had her supper served in the upstairs parlour, and had them, and me, and nobody else. She says one of them saw me out yesterday morning, and was 'smitten'—that's what she calls it."
Eliza gave an affected laugh as she repeated the vulgar word, and coloured a little. "She says if I'll come to see her in town she's no doubt but that he'll 'propose.'".
"But I thought you were not going?"
"I don't care for her," said Eliza, as if ingratitude were a virtue, "but I rather like the young gentleman. That makes a difference. Look here! She says he's getting on in business, and would give me a carriage. How do you think I should look driving in a carriage, like Mrs. Brown? Should I look as grand as she does?"
"Much grander, I daresay, and much handsomer."
"They all give dinner parties at Montreal." Eliza said this reflectively, speaking the name of that city just as an English country girl would speak of "London." "Don't you think I could go to dinner parties as grand as any one? And, look here, they showed me all sorts of photographs the Montreal ladies get taken of themselves, and one was taken with her hair down and her side face turned. And Mrs. Glass has been up here this afternoon, saying that her gentlemen friends say I must be taken in the same way. She was fixing me for it. Look, I'll show you how it is."
Her great masses of hair, left loose apparently from this last visit, were thrown down her back in a moment, and Eliza, looking-glass in hand, sat herself sideways on a chair, and disposed her hair so that it hung with shining copper glow like a curtain behind her pale profile. "What do I look like, Miss Sophia?"
"Like what you are, Eliza—a handsome girl."
"Then why shouldn't I marry a rich man? It would be easier than drudging here, and yet I thought it was grand to be here last year. It's easy enough to get up in the world."
"Yes, when anyone has the right qualities for it."
"I have the right qualities."
"Unscrupulousness?" interrogated Sophia; and then she charged the girl with the falsehood of her name.
Eliza put down her looking-glass and rolled up her hair. There was something almost leonine in her attitude, in her silence, as she fastened the red masses. Sophia felt the influence of strong feeling upon her; she almost felt fear. Then Eliza came and stood in front of her.
"Is he very ill, do you think, Miss Sophia?"
"Not dangerously." Sophia had no doubt as to who was meant. "If he would only take reasonable care he'd be pretty well."
"But he won't," she cried. "On the clearin', when he used to take cold, he'd do all the wrong things. He'll just go and kill himself doing like that now, when he goes back there alone—and winter coming on."
"Do you think you could persuade him not to go?"
"He's just that sort of a man he'd never be happy anywhere else. He hones for the place. No, he'll go back and kill himself. I'm sorry, but it can't be helped. I'm not sorry I came away from him; I'm not sorry I changed my name, and did all the things I s'pose he's told you I did, and that I s'pose you think are so wicked. I'd do it again if I was as frightened and as angry. Was he to make me his slave-wife? That's what he wanted of me! I know the man!"—scornfully—"he said it was for my good, but it was his own way he wanted." All the forced quiescence of her manner had changed to fire. "And if you think that I'm unnatural, and wicked to pretend I had a different name, and to do what I did to get quit of him, then I'll go among people who will think it was clever and a fine joke, and will think more about my fine appearance than about being good all day long."
Sophia was terribly roused by the torrent of feeling that was now pouring forth, not more in words than in silent force, from the young woman who stood over her.
"Go!" she cried, "go to such people. Marry the man who cares for your hair and your good looks. Urge him on to make money, and buy yourself clothes and carriages and houses. I have no doubt you can do it! I tell you, Eliza Cameron, such things are not much worth picking up at a gift, let alone selling the nicer part of yourself for them!"
The two had suddenly clashed, with word and feeling, the one against the other.
The window of Eliza's room was open, and the prospect from it had that far-off peace that the prospect from high windows is apt to have. The perfect weather breathed calm over the distant land, over the nearer village; but inside, the full light fell upon the two women aglow with their quarrel.
Sophia, feeling some instinctive link to the vain, ambitious girl before her, struck with words as one strikes in the dark, aiming at a depth and tenderness that she dimly felt to be there.
She believed in, and yet doubted, the strength in the better part of Eliza's heart; believed, but spoke hurriedly, because she felt that a chilly doubt was coming over her as to whether, after all, there was any comprehension, any answering thrill, for the words she said.
Her own stately beauty was at its height, at its loveliest hour, when she spoke. She had been, in girlhood, what is called a beauty; she had dazzled men's eyes and turned their heads; and when the first bloom was past, she had gone out of the glare, having neither satisfied the world nor been satisfied with it, because of the higher craving that is worldly disability. She had turned into the common paths of life and looked upon her beauty and her triumph as past. And yet, ten years after the triumphs of her girlhood, this day, this hour, found her more beautiful than she had ever been before. The stimulus of a new and more perfect climate, the daily labour for which others pitied her, had done their part. The angels who watch over prayer and effort and failure; and failure and effort and prayer, had laid their hands upon her brow, bestowing graces. As she sat now, speaking out of a full heart, there came a colour and light that gave an ethereal charm to her handsome face. There was no one there to see it; Eliza Cameron was not susceptible to beauty. God, who created beauty in flowers and women, and knew to the full the uses thereof, did not set flowers in gardeners' shows nor women in ball-rooms.
Sophia had spoken strongly, vividly, of the vanity of what men call success, and the emptiness of what they call wealth, but Eliza, self-centred, did not enter into this wide theme.
"You despise me," she repeated sullenly, "because of what I have done."
"What makes you think I despise you?"
She did not intend to draw a confession on the false supposition that Bates had already told all the story, but this was the result. Eliza, with arms folded defiantly, stated such details of her conduct as she supposed, would render her repulsive, stated them badly, and evoked that feeling of repulsion that she was defying.
Sophia was too much roused to need time for thought. "I cannot condemn you, for I have done as bad a thing as you have done, and for the same reason," she cried.
Eliza looked at her, and faltered in her self-righteousness. "I don't believe it," she said rudely. She fell back a pace or two, and took to sorting the piles of white coverlets mechanically.
"You did what you did because of everything in the world that you wanted that you thought you could get that way; and, for the same reason, I once agreed to marry a man I didn't like. If you come to think of it, that was as horrid and unnatural; it is a worse thing to desecrate the life of a living man than the death of a dead one. I stand condemned as much as you, Eliza; but don't you go on now to add to one unnatural deed another as bad."
"Why did you do it?" asked Eliza, drawn, wondering, from the thought of herself.
"I thought I could not bear poverty and the crowd of children at home, and that fortune and rank would give me all I wanted; and the reason I didn't go through with it was that through his generosity I tasted all the advantages in gifts and social distinction before the wedding day, and I found it wasn't worth what I was giving for it, just as you will find some day that all you can gain in the way you are going now is not worth the disagreeableness, let alone the wrong, of the wrong-doing."
"You think that because you are high-minded," said Eliza, beginning again in a nervous way to sort the linen.
"So are you, Eliza." Miss Rexford wondered whether she was true or false in saying it, whether it was the merest flattery to gain an end or the generous conviction of her heart. She did not know. The most noble truths that we utter often seem to us doubtfully true.
Now Sophia felt that what Eliza had said was only the fact—that it was very sad that Mr. Bates should go ill and alone to his lonely home, but that it could not be helped. To whatever degree of repentance and new resolution Eliza might be brought, Sophia saw no way whatever of materially helping Bates; but she urged the girl to go and visit him, and say such kind and penitent things as might be in her power to say, before he set forth on his melancholy journey.
"No," said Eliza, "I won't go"; and this was all that could be obtained from her.
The visit was at an end. Sophia felt that it had been futile, and she did not overlook the rebuff to herself. With this personal affront rankling, and indignation that Eliza should still feel so resentful after all that had been urged on behalf of Bates, she made her way into the street.
She was feeling that life was a weary thing when she chanced, near the end of the village, to look back, and saw Alec Trenholme some way behind, but coming in the same direction. Having her report to give, she waited and brought him to her side.
Sophia told all that had just passed, speaking with a restful feeling of confidence in him. She had never felt just this confidence in a man before; it sprang up from somewhere, she knew not where; probably from the union of her sense of failure and his strength. She even told him the analogy she had drawn between Eliza's conduct and the mistake of her own life, alluding only to what all her little public knew of her deeds; but it seemed to him that she was telling what was sacred to her self-knowledge. He glanced at her often, and drank in all the pleasure of her beauty. He even noticed the simplicity of the cotton gown and leather belt, and the hat that was trimmed only with dried everlasting flowers, such as grew in every field. As she talked his cane struck sometimes a sharp passionate blow among plumes of golden-rod that grew by their path, and snapped many a one.
The roadside grass was ragged. The wild plum shrubs by the fences were bronzed by September. In the fields the stubble was yellow and brown. The scattered white houses were all agleam in the clear, cool sunshine.
As he listened, Alec Trenholme's feeling was not now wrought upon at all by what he was hearing of the girl who had stumbled in and out of his life in ghostly fashion. Her masquerade, with all its consequences, had brought him within near touch of another woman, whose personality at this hour overshadowed his mind to the exclusion of every other interest. He was capable only of thinking that Sophia was treating him as a well-known friend. The compunction suppressed within him culminated when, at her father's gate, Miss Rexford held out her hand for the good-bye grasp of his. The idea that he was playing a false part became intolerable. Impulsively he showed reluctance to take the hand.
"Miss Rexford, I—I'm afraid you think—"
Then he remembered the promise by which he was bound to let Robert tell his own story. Confused, he seemed to know nothing but that he must finish his sentence to satisfy the interrogation in her eyes.
"You think I am a gentleman like Robert. I am only a—"
"What?" she asked, looking upon him good-humouredly, as she would have looked upon a blundering boy.
"I am only a—a—cad, you know."
His face had an uncomfortable look, hot and red. She was puzzled, but the meaning that was in his thought did not enter hers. In a moment that romantic didacticism which was one of the strongest elements in her character had struck his strange words into its own music.
"Oh, Mr. Trenholme!" she cried; "do not so far outdo us all in the grace of confession. We are all willing to own ourselves sinners; but to confess to vulgarity, to be willing to admit that in us personally there is a vein of something vulgar, that, to our shame, we sometimes strike upon! Ah, people must be far nobler than they are before that clause can be added to the General Confession!"
He looked at her, and hardly heard her words; but went on his way with eyes dazzled and heart tumultuous.
When at home he turned into the study, where his brother was still a prisoner. The autumn breeze and sunshine entered even into this domain of books and papers. The little garden was so brimful of bloom that it overflowed within the window-sill.
When he had loitered long enough to make believe that he had not come in for the sake of this speech, Alec said, "I'm going to the West—at least, when Bates is gone, I'll go; and, look here, I don't know that I'd say anything to these people if I were in your case. Don't feel any obligation to say anything on my account."
Principal Trenholme was at his writing-table. "Ah?" said he, prolonging the interrogation with benign inflection.
"Have you come to doubt the righteousness of your own conclusions?" But he did not discuss the subject further.
He was busy, for the students and masters of the college were to assemble in a few days; yet he found time in a minute or two to ask idly, "Where have you been?"
"For one thing, I walked out from the village with Miss Rexford."
"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.