CHAPTER XVIII.
The next day, before Trenholme had had time to devise a plan for seeing Miss Rexford, Mrs. Martha brought him a telegram. She watched him as he drew his finger through the poor paper of the envelope, watched him as one might watch another on the eve of some decisive event; yet she could not have expected much from a telegram—they came too often.
"Ha!" cried Trenholme, "we are going to have visitors, Mrs. Martha."
A good deal to Trenholme's surprise, the message was from Alec, and from a point no further away than Quebec. It stated that he was there with Bates, who was ill, and he thought the best thing would be to bring him with him to Chellaston, if his brother had house-room enough.
The answers we give to such appeals are more often the outcome of life-long habit than instances of separate volition. No question of what answer to send occurred to Trenholme's mind as he pencilled his reply, assuring a welcome to the sick man.
When the answer was despatched he saw that, as fate had thrust the notice of this arrival between him and the proposed interview with Sophia; it would be better, after all, to wait only a day or two more, until he knew his brother's mind.
He heard nothing more from Alec that day. The day after was Saturday, and it rained heavily.
"What time will the gentlemen arrive?" asked Mrs. Martha, but not as if she took much interest in the matter.
"I can't tell," he replied. "They will probably let us know; but it's best to be ready when guests may come any time, isn't it?"
He asked her this with a cheering smile, because her manner was strange, and he wished to rouse her to a sense of her duties.
"Yes, sir; 'twouldn't seem like as if we was truly expecting and hoping unless we did our best to be ready."
The fervour of her answer surprised him.
For some time past Winifred Rexford had been spending part of each morning learning housewifery of Mrs. Martha. That day, because of the rain, Trenholme insisted upon keeping her to dinner with him. He brought her into his dining-room with playful force, and set her at the head of his table. It was a great pleasure to him to have the child. He twitted her with her improvement in the culinary art, demanding all sorts of impossible dishes in the near future for his brother's entertainment. He was surprised at the sedateness of her answers, and at a strange look of excited solicitude that arose in her eyes. It seemed to him that she was several times on the point of saying something to him, and yet she did not speak.
"What is it, Princess Win?" he cried. "What is in your mind, little one?"
He came to the conclusion that she was not very well. He got no information from her on the subject of her health or anything else; but thinking naturally that the change in the weather might have given her cold, he took pains to wrap her in his own mackintosh and take her home under his own large umbrella.
When there, he went in. He was greatly cheered by the idea that, although he might not tell his mind that day, he was now and henceforth courting Sophia openly, whatever befell; but the open courting, since it had only begun with his resolution of yesterday, and existed only in his own intention, was naturally not recognised. He was received with the ordinary everyday friendliness. But a change had occurred in the family circumstances, nothing less than that they sat now in the long neglected and still unfurnished room which went by the name of the drawing-room. The windows had been thrown open, and the covering taken from the family carriage. There it stood, still wheelless, but occupied now by Sophia and Mrs. Rexford, the girls and the darning basket, while some of the children climbed upon the box. Blue and Red, who were highly delighted with the arrangement, explained it to Trenholme.
"You see, we had a carriage we couldn't use, and a room we couldn't use for want of furniture; so this rainy day, when we all were so tired of the other room, mamma suddenly thought that we'd make the carriage do for furniture. It's the greatest fun possible." They gave little jumps on the soft cushions, and were actually darning with some energy on account of the change.
Trenholme shook hands with the carriage folk in the gay manner necessary to the occasion, but his heart ached for the little mother who had thus so bravely buried her last vestige of pride in the carriage by giving it to her children as a plaything.
"It's more comfortable than armchairs, and keeps the feet from the bare floor," she said to him, in defiance of any criticisms he might have in mind. But all his thought was with and for her, and in this he was pleased to see that he had divined Sophia's mind, for, after adding her warm but brief praise to the new arrangement, she changed the subject.
Winifred went upstairs quietly. Trenholme suggested that he hardly thought her looking quite well.
"She's an odd child," said Sophia. "I did not tell you, mamma, what I found her doing the other day. She was trying on the white frock she had this spring when she was confirmed. It's unlike her to do a thing like that for no reason; and when I teased her she began to cry, and then began speaking to me about religion. She has been puzzled by the views your housekeeper holds, Mr. Trenholme, and excited by old Cameron's teaching about the end of the world."
"I don't think it's the end of the world he's prophesying exactly," said Trenholme, musingly. "The Adventists believe that the earth will not be ruined, but glorified by the Second Advent."
"Children should not hear of such abstruse, far-off things," observed Mrs. Rexford; "it does harm; but with no nursery, no schoolroom, what can one do?"
Trenholme told them of Alec's telegram, and something of what he knew concerning Bates. His own knowledge was scanty, but he had not even said all he might have said when Mrs. Rexford politely regretted that her husband and son, taking advantage of the rain, had both gone to the next town to see some machinery they were buying, and would be away over Sunday, otherwise they would not have missed the opportunity offered by Sunday's leisure to call upon the newcomers.
"Oh, he's quite a common working-man, I fancy," added Trenholme, hastily, surprised at the gloss his words had thrown on Bates's position, and dimly realising that his way of putting things might perhaps at some other times be as misleading as it had just that moment been.
Then he went away rather abruptly, feeling burdened with the further apologies she made with respect to Alec.