CHAPTER XIX.
Trenholme went home and sat down to write an article for a magazine. Its subject was the discipline of life. He did not get on with it very well. He rose more than once to look at the weather-glass and the weather. Rain came in torrents, ceasing at intervals. The clouds swept over, with lighter and darker spaces among them. The wind began to rise. Thunder was in the air; as it became dusk lightning was seen in the far distance.
A little after dark he heard a quick, light step upon the garden path. The voice of the young dentist was audible at the door, and Mrs. Martha ushered him into the study. Trenholme had felt more or less prejudice against this fellow since he had become aware that he was in some way connected with the incident that had discomforted his brother in his lonely station. He looked at him with a glance of severe inquiry.
"I'm real sorry to disturb you," said the dentist; "but, upon my word,
I'm uneasy in my mind. I've lost old Mr. Cameron."
It occurred to Trenholme now for the first time since he had heard of Bates's coming that he, Bates, was the very man who could speak with authority as to whether the old man in question had a right to the name of Cameron. He wondered if the American could possibly have private knowledge of Bates's movements, and knew that his coming could dispel the mystery. If so, and if he had interest in keeping up the weird story, he had done well now to lose his charge for the time being. Wild and improbable as such a plot seemed, it was not more extraordinary than the fact that this intensely practical young man had sought the other and protected him so long.
"Your friend is in the habit of wandering, is he not?" asked Trenholme, guardedly.
"Can't say that he is since he came here, Principal. He's just like a child, coming in when it's dark. I've never"—he spoke with zeal—"I've never known that good old gentleman out as late as this, and it's stormy."
"Did you come here under the idea that I knew anything about him?"
"Well, no, I can't say that I did; but I reckoned you knew your Bible pretty well, and that you were the nearest neighbour of mine that did." There was an attempt at nervous pleasantry in this, perhaps to hide real earnestness.
Trenholme frowned. "I don't understand you."
"Well, 'twould be strange if you did, come to think of it; but I'm mighty uneasy about that old man, and I've come to ask you what the Bible really does say about the Lord's coming. Whether he's crazed or not, that old man believes that He's coming to-night. He's been telling the folks all day that they ought to go out with joy to meet Him. I never thought of him budging from the house till some manifestation occurred, which I thought wouldn't occur, but when I found just now he was gone, it struck me all of a heap that he was gone out with that idea. I do assure you"—he spoke earnestly—"that's what he's after at this very time. He's gone out to meet Him, and I came to ask you—well—what sort of a place he'd be likely to choose. He knows his Bible right off, that old gentleman does; he's got his notions out of it, whether they're right or wrong."
Trenholme stared at him. It was some time before the young man's ideas made their way into his mind. Then he wondered if his apparent earnestness could possibly be real.
"Your application is an extraordinary one," he said stiffly.
Harkness was too sensitive not to perceive the direction the doubt had taken. "It may be extraordinary, but I do assure you it's genuine."
As he grew to believe in the youth's sincerity, Trenholme thought he perceived that, although he had asked what would be the probable direction of the enthusiast's wanderings, the dentist was really stricken with doubt as to whether the prediction might not possibly be correct, and longed chiefly to know Trenholme's mind on that important matter.
"This crazy fellow is astray in his interpretation of Scripture," he said, "if he believes that it teaches that the Second Advent is now imminent; and his fixing upon to-night is, of course, quite arbitrary. God works by growth and development, not by violent miracle. If you study the account of our Lord's first coming, you see that, not only was there long preparation, but that the great miracle was hidden in the beautiful disguise of natural processes. We must interpret all special parts of the inspired Word by that which we learn of its Author in the whole of His revelation, otherwise we should not deal as reverently with it as we deal with the stray words of any human author."
The young man, if he did not understand, was certainly comforted by this official opinion.
"I'm glad to hear you look upon it in that light," he said approvingly, "for, to tell the truth, if I thought the millennium was coming to-night I'd be real scared, although I've lived better than most young men of my age do; but, some way, the millennium isn't the sort of thing I seem to hanker after very much. I suppose, though, people as good as you would like nothing so well as to see it begin at once."
Trenholme looked down at the sheet of paper before him, and absently made marks upon it with his pen. He was thinking of the spiritual condition of a soul which had no ardent desire for the advent of its Lord, but it was not of the young man he was thinking.
"Of course," the latter continued, "I didn't suppose myself there was anything in it—at least"—candidly—"I didn't in the day-time; but when I found he'd gone out in the dark, and thought of all the times I'd heard him praying—" he broke off. "He's real good. I'm a better fellow for having lived with him so long, but I wish to goodness I'd never caught him."
The word "caught," so expressive of the American's relation to the wanderer, roused Trenholme's attention, and he asked now with interest, "May I inquire why you did take possession of him and bring him here?"
"Well, as to that, I don't know that I'd like to tell," said the young man, frankly. "Since I've lived with him I've seen my reasons to be none of the best." He fidgeted now, rising, cap in hand. "I ought to go and look after him," he said, "if I only knew where to go."
It struck Trenholme that Harkness had an idea where to go, and that his questioning was really a prelude to its announcement. "Where do you think he has gone?"
"Well, if you ask me what I think, Principal—but, mind, I haven't a word of proof of it—I think he's gone up the mountain, and that he's not gone there alone."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I think drunken Job's wife, and old McNider, and some more of the Second Advent folks, will go with him, expecting to be caught up."
"Impossible!" cried Trenholme, vehemently. Then more soberly, "Even if they had such wild intentions, the weather would, of course, put a stop to it."
Harkness did not look convinced. "Job's threatened to beat his wife to death if she goes, and it's my belief she'll go."
He twirled his hat as he spoke. He was, in fact, trying to get the responsibility of his suspicions lightened by sharing them with Trenholme at this eleventh hour, but his hearer was not so quickly roused.
"If you believe that," he said coolly, "you ought to give information to the police."
"The police know all that I know. They've heard the people preaching and singing in the streets. I can't make them believe the story if they don't. They'd not go with me one step on a night like this—not one step."
There was a short silence. Trenholme was weighing probabilities. On the whole, he thought the police were in the right of it, and that this young man was probably carried away by a certain liking for novel excitement.
"In any case," he said aloud, "I don't see what I can do in the matter."
Harkness turned to leave as abruptly as he had come in. "If you don't, I see what I can do. I'm going along there to see if I can find them."
"As you are in a way responsible for the old man, perhaps that is your duty," replied Trenholme, secretly thinking that on such roads and under such skies the volatile youth would not go very far.
A blast of wind entered the house door as Harkness went out of it, scattering Trenholme's papers, causing his study lamp to flare up suddenly, and almost extinguishing it.
Trenholme went on with his writing, and now a curious thing happened. About nine o'clock he again heard steps upon his path, and the bell rang. Thinking it a visitor, he stepped to the door himself, as he often did. There was no one there but a small boy, bearing a large box on his shoulders. He asked for Mrs. Martha. "Have you got a parcel for her?" said Trenholme, thinking his housekeeper had probably retired, as she did not come to the door. The boy signified that he had, and made his way into the light of the study door. Trenholme saw now, by the label on the box, that he had come from the largest millinery establishment the place could boast. It rather surprised him that the lean old woman should have been purchasing new apparel there, but there was nothing to be done but tell the boy to put out the contents of the box and be gone. Accordingly, upon a large chair the boy laid a white gown of delicate material, and went away.
Trenholme stood contemplating the gown; he even touched it lightly with his hand, so surprised he was. He soon concluded there was some mistake, and afterwards, when he heard the housekeeper enter the kitchen from the garden door, he was interested enough to get up with alacrity and call to her. "A gown has come for you, Mrs. Martha," he cried. Now, he thought, the mistake would be proved; but she only came in soberly, and took up the gown as if it was an expected thing. He bade her good-night. "Good-night," said she, looking at him. There was a red spot on each of her thin, withered cheeks. He heard her footstep mounting her bedroom staircase, but no clue to the mystery of her purchase offered itself to mitigate his surprise. Had she not been his housekeeper now for six years, and during that time not so much as a trace of any vagary of mind had he observed in her.
About an hour afterwards, when he had gone into the next room to look for some papers, he heard quiet sounds going on in the kitchen, which was just at the rear end of the small hall on which the room doors opened. A moment more and he surmised that his housekeeper must have again descended for something. "Are you there, Mrs. Martha?" he called. There was no answer in words, but hearing the kitchen door open, he looked into the lobby, and there a strange vision flashed on his sight. His end of the lobby was dark, but in the kitchen doorway, by the light of the candles she held, he saw his elderly housekeeper arrayed in the pure white gown.
He paused in sheer astonishment, looking at her, and he observed she trembled—trembled all over with the meek courage it cost her to thus exhibit herself; for she appeared to have opened the door for no other purpose than to let him see her. She said nothing, and he—most men are cowards with regard to women—he had a vague sense that it was his duty to ask her why she wore that dress, but he did not do it. He had no reason to suppose her mad; she had a perfect right to array herself in full dress at night if she chose; she was a great deal older than he, a woman worthy of all respect. This was the tenor of his thought—of his self-excusing, it might be. He bade her good-night again, somewhat timidly. Surely, he thought, it was her place to make remark, if remark were needful; but she stood there silent till he had gone back into the room. Then she shut the kitchen door.
In a little while, however, as stillness reigned in the house, some presentiment of evil made him think it would be as well to go and see if Mrs. Martha had finished trying on her finery and gone to bed as usual. He found the kitchen dark and empty. He went to the foot of her stairs. There was no chink of light showing from her room. The stillness of the place entered into his mind as the thin edge of a wedge of alarm. "Mrs. Martha!" he called in sonorous voice. "Mrs. Martha!" But no one answered. He opened the back-door, and swept the dark garden with the light of his lamp, but she was not there. Lamp in hand, he went upstairs, and passed rapidly through the different rooms. As he entered the less frequented ones, he began to fear almost as much to see the gaily-attired figure as he would have done to see a ghost. He did not know why this feeling crept over him, but, whether he feared or hoped to see her, he did not. The house was empty, save for himself. The night blast beat upon it. The darkness outside was rife with storm, but into it the old woman must have gone in her festal array.