A commercial traveller who was acquainted with the place put in his remark. "There isn't a man in town that I wouldn't have expected to see gulled sooner."
To which a thin, religious man, who, before Trenholme entered, had leaned to the opinion that there were more things in the world than they could understand, now retorted that it was more likely that the last speaker was gulled himself. Principal Trenholme, he asserted, wasn't a man to put his faith in anything without proofs.
Chellaston was not a very gossiping place. For the most part the people had too much to do, and were too intent upon their own business, to take much trouble to retail what they chanced to hear; but there are some things which, as the facetious man observed, the dead in their graves would gossip about if they could; and one of these themes, according to him, was that Principal Trenholme believed there had been something supernatural about the previous life of the old preacher. The story went about, impressing more particularly the female portion of the community, but certainly not without influence upon the males also. Portly men, who a week before would have thought themselves compromised by giving a serious thought to the narrative, now stood still in the street to get the chance of hearing the preacher, and felt that in doing so they were wrapped in all the respectability of the cloth of Trenholme's coats, and standing firm on the letters of his Oxford degree and upon all the learning of the New College.
They did not believe the story themselves. No, there was a screw loose somewhere; but Principal Trenholme had some definite knowledge of the matter. The old man had been in a trance, a very long trance, to say the least of it, and had got up a changed creature. Principal Trenholme was not prepared to scout the idea that he had been nearer to death than falls to the lot of most living men.
It will be seen that the common sense of the speakers shaped crude rumour to suit themselves. Had they left it crude, it would have died. It is upon the nice sense of the probable and possible in talkative men that mad rumour feeds.
As for Trenholme, he became more or less aware of the report that had gone out about his private knowledge of old Cameron, but it was less rather than more. The scholastic life of the college was quite apart from the life of the village, and in the village those who talked most about Cameron were the least likely to talk to Trenholme on any subject. His friends were not those who were concerned with the rumour; but even when he was taxed with it, the whole truth that he knew was no apparent contradiction. He wrote to Alec, making further inquiries, but Alec had retreated again many miles from the post. To be silent and ignore the matter seemed to be his only course.
Thus it happened that, because Harkness housed him in the hope of working upon Eliza, and because Trenholme happened to have had a brother at Turrifs Station, the strange old preacher found a longer resting place and a more attentive hearing in the village of Chellaston than he would have been likely to find elsewhere.
CHAPTER XI.
There was in Chellaston a very small and poor congregation of the sect called Adventists. The sect was founded by one Miller, a native of New York State, a great preacher and godly man, who, from study of prophecy, became convinced that the Second Coming of the Lord would take place in the year 1843. He obtained a large following; and when the time passed and his expectation was not fulfilled, this body, instead of melting away, became gradually greater, and developed into a numerous and rather influential sect. In the year of Miller's prediction, 1843, there had been among his followers great excitement, awe and expectation; and the set time passed, and the prediction had no apparent fulfilment, but lay to every one's sight, like a feeble writing upon the sands of fantasy, soon effaced by the ever flowing tide of natural law and orderly progression. Now, that this was the case and that yet this body of believers did not diminish but increased, did not become demoralised but grew in moral strength, did not lose faith but continued to cherish a more ardent hope and daily expectation of the Divine appearing, is no doubt due to the working of some law which we do not understand, and which it would therefore be unscientific to pronounce upon.
The congregation of Adventists in Chellaston, however, was not noticeable for size or influence. Some in the neighbourhood did not even know that this congregation existed, until it put forth its hand and took to itself the old preacher who was called Lazarus Cameron. They understood his language as others did not; they believed that he had come with a message for them; they often led him into their meeting-place and into their houses; and he, perhaps merely falling into the mechanical habit of going where he had been led, appeared in his own fashion to consort with them.