There, was something weird about the old preacher, although he was healthy, vigorous, and kindly, clean-looking in body and soul; but the aspect of any one is in the eye of the beholder. This man, whose mind was blank except upon one theme, whose senses seemed lost except at rare times, when awakened perhaps by an effort of his will, or perhaps by an unbidden wave of psychical sympathy with some one to whom he was drawn by unseen union, awoke a certain feeling of sensational interest in most people when they approached him. The public were in the main divided into two classes in their estimate of him—those who felt the force of his religion, and argued therefrom that his opinions were to be respected; and those who believed that his mind was insane, and argued therefrom that his religion was either a fancy or a farce. At first there was a great deal of talk about whether he should be put in a madhouse or not; some called Harkness a philanthropist, and others called him a meddling fellow. Soon, very soon, there was less talk: that which is everybody's business is nobody's business. Harkness continued to befriend him in the matter of food and lodging; the old man grew to be at home in the Harmon house and its neglected surroundings. When the will to do so seized him, he went into the village and lifted up his voice, and preached the exactions of the love of the Son of God, proclaiming that He would come again, and that quickly.
The winter days had grown very long; the sun had passed the vernal equinox, and yet it looked upon unbroken snowfields. Then, about the middle of April, the snow passed quickly away in blazing sunshine, in a thousand rivulets, in a flooded river. The roads were heavy with mud, but the earth was left green, the bud of spring having been nurtured beneath the kindly shelter of the snow.
CHAPTER XII.
Now came the most lovely moment of the year. All the trees were putting forth new leaves, leaves so young, so tiny as yet, that one could see the fowls of the air when they lodged in the branches—no small privilege, for now the orange oriole, and the bluebird, and the primrose-coloured finch, were here, there, and everywhere; and more rarely the scarlet tanager. A few days before and they had not come; a few days more and larger leaves would hide them perfectly. Just at this time, too, along the roadsides, big hawthorn shrubs and wild plum were in blossom, and in the sheltered fields the mossy sod was pied with white and purple violets, whose flowerets so outstripped their half-grown leaves that blue and milky ways were seen in woodland glades.
With the sense of freedom that comes with the thus sudden advent of the young summer, Winifred Rexford strayed out of the house one morning. She did not mean to go, and when she went through the front gate she only meant to go as far as the first wild plum-tree, to see if the white bloom was turning purple yet, as Principal Trenholme had told her it would. When she got to the first plum-tree she went on to the second. Winifred wore a grey cotton dress; it was short, not yet to her ankles, and her broad hat shaded her from the sun. When she reached the second group of plum-trees she saw a scarlet tanager sitting on a telegraph pole—for along the margin of the road, standing among uncut grass and flowers and trees, tall barkless stumps were set, holding the wires on high. Perhaps they were ugly things, but a tree whose surface is uncut is turned on Nature's lathe; at any rate, to the child the poles were merely a part of the Canadian road, and the scarlet tanager showed its plumage to advantage as it sat on the bare wood. There was no turning back then; even Sophia would have neglected her morning task to see a tanager! She crept up under it, and the bird, like a streak of red flame, shot forth from the pole, to a group of young pine trees further on.
So Winifred strayed up the road about a quarter of a mile, till she came to the gate of the Harmon garden. The old house, always half concealed, was quickly being entirely hidden by the massive Curtains the young leaves were so busily weaving. The tanager turned in here, as what bird would not when it spied a tract of ground where Nature was riotously decking a bower with the products of all the roots and seeds of a deserted garden! There was many a gap in the weather-beaten fence where the child might have followed, but she dare not, for she was in great awe of the place, because the preacher who was said to have died and come to life again lived there. She only stood and looked through the fence, and the tanager—having flitted near the house—soared and settled among the feathery boughs of a proud acacia tree; she had to look across half an acre of bushes to see him, and then he was so high and so far that it seemed (as when looking at the stars) she did not see him, but only the ray of scarlet light that travelled from him through an atmosphere of leaflets. It was very trying, for any one knows that it is something to be able to say that you have come to close quarters with a scarlet tanager.
Winifred, stooping and looking through the fence, soon heard the college bell jangle; she knew that it was nine o'clock, and boys and masters were being ingathered for morning work. The college buildings in their bare enclosure stood on the other side of the road. Winifred would have been too shy to pass the playground while the boys were out, but now that every soul connected with the place would be indoors, she thought she might go round the sides of the Harmon garden and see the red bird much nearer from a place she thought of.
This place was nothing but a humble, disused, and untidy burying-ground, that occupied the next lot in the narrow strip of land that here for a mile divided road and river. Winifred ran over the road between the Harmon garden and the college fence, and, climbing the log fence, stood among the quiet gravestones that chronicled the past generations of Chellaston. Here grass and wild flowers grew apace, and close by ran the rippling river reflecting the violet sky above. A cemetery, every one knows, is a place where any one may walk or sit as long as he likes, but Winifred was surprised to find Principal Trenholme's housekeeper there before her; and moreover, this staid, sad woman was in the very place Winifred was going to, for she was looking through the fence that enclosed the Harmon garden.
"Good morning, Mrs. Martha," said Winifred politely, concealing her surprise.
"I've been milking," said the sad woman, glancing slightly at a pail of foaming milk that she had set for greater security between two grave-heaps.