If she was in trouble then, she did not show it to him.

CHAPTER XVI.

Nothing contributes more frequently to indecision of character in the larger concerns of existence than a life overcrowded with effort and performance. Had Robert Trenholme not been living at too great a pace, his will, naturally energetic, would not, during that spring and summer, have halted as it did between his love for Sophia Rexford and his shame concerning his brother's trade. With the end of June his school had closed for the summer, but at that time the congregation at his little church greatly increased; then, too, he had repairs in the college to superintend, certain articles to write for a Church journal, interesting pupils to correspond with--in a word, his energy, which sometimes by necessity and sometimes by ambition had become regulated to too quick a pace, would not now allow him to take leisure when it offered, or even to perceive the opportunity. His mind, habituated to unrest, was perpetually suggesting to him things needing to be done, and he always saw a mirage of leisure in front of him, and went on the faster in order to come up to it. By this mirage he constantly vowed to himself that when the opportunity came he would take time to think out some things which had grown indistinct to him. At present the discomfort and sorrow of not feeling at liberty to make love to the woman he loved was some excuse for avoiding thought, and he found distraction in hard work and social engagements. With regard to Sophia he stayed his mind on the belief that if he dared not woo she was not being wooed, either by any man who was his rival, or by those luxuries and tranquillities of life which nowadays often lure young women to prefer single blessedness.

In the meantime he felt he had done what he could by writing again and again, and even telegraphing, to Turrifs Station. It is a great relief to the modern mind to telegraph when impatient; but when there is nothing at the other end of the wire but an operator who is under no official obligation to deliver the message at an address many miles distant, the action has only the utility already mentioned--the relief it gives to the mind of the sender. The third week in August came, and yet he had heard nothing more from Alec. Still, Alec had said he would come in summer, and if the promise was kept he could not now be long, and Robert clung to the hope that he would return with ambitions toward some higher sphere of life, and in a better mind concerning the advisability of not being too loquacious about his former trade.

In this hope he took opportunity one day about this time, when calling on Mrs. Rexford, to mention that Alec was probably coming. He desired, he said, to have the pleasure of introducing him to her.

"He is very true and simple-heaped," said the elder brother; "and from the photograph you have seen, you will know he is a st.u.r.dy lad." He spoke with a certain air of depression, which Sophia judged to relate to wild oats she supposed this Alec to be sowing. "He was always his dear father's favourite boy," added Trenholme, with a quite involuntary sigh.

"A Benjamin!" cried Mrs. Rexford, but, with that quickness of mind natural to her, she did not pause an instant over the thought.

"Well, really, Princ.i.p.al Trenholme, it'll be a comfort to you to have him under your own eye. I often say to my husband that that must be our comfort now--that the children are all under our eye; and, indeed, with but one sitting-room furnished, and so little outing except in our own fields, it couldn't well be otherwise. It's an advantage in a way."

"A doubtful advantage in some ways," said Sophia; but the little children were now heard crying, so she ran from the room.

"Ah, Princ.i.p.al Trenholme," cried the little step-mother, shaking her head (she was sewing most vigorously the while), "if my children will but profit by _her_ example! But, indeed, I reproach myself that she is here at all, although she came against my desire. Sophia is not involved in our--I might say poverty, Princ.i.p.al Trenholme." (It was the first-time the word had crossed her lips, although she always conversed freely to him.) "When I see the farm producing so little in comparison, I may say, in confidence, _poverty_; but Sophia has sufficient income of her own." "I did not know that," said Trenholme, sincerely. "She came with us, for we couldn't think of taking any of it for the house expenses if she was away; and, as it's not large, it's the more sacrifice she makes. But Sophia--Sophia might have been a very rich woman if she'd married the man she was engaged to. Mr. Monekton was only too anxious to settle everything upon her."

Trenholme had positively started at these words. He did not hear the next remark. The eight years just pa.s.sed of Sophia's life were quite unknown to him, and this was a revelation. He began to hear the talk again.

"My husband said the jointure was quite remarkable. And then the carriages and gowns he would have given! You should have seen the jewels she had! And poor Mr. Monekton--it was one month off the day the wedding was fixed, for when she broke it off. Suddenly she would have none of it."

Trying to piece together these staccato jottings by what he knew of the character of his love, Trenholme's mind was sore with curiosity about it all, especially with regard to the character of Mr. Monckton.

"Perhaps"--he spoke politely, as if excusing the fickleness of the absent woman--"perhaps some fresh knowledge concerning the gentleman reached Miss Rexford."

"For many a year we had known all that was to be known about Mr.

Monckton," declared the mother, vigorously. "Sophia changed her mind. It was four years ago, but she might be Mrs. Monckton in a month if she'd say the word. He has never been consoled; her father has just received a letter from him to-day begging him to renew the subject with her; but when Sophia changes once she's not likely to alter again. There's not one in a thousand to equal her."

Trenholme agreed perfectly with the conclusion, even if he did not see that it was proved by the premises. He went away with his mind much agitated and filled with new anxieties. The fact that she had once consented to marry another seemed to him to make it more probable that she might do so again. He had allowed himself to a.s.sume that since the time when he had seen her as a young girl, the admired of all, Sophia had drifted entirely out of that sort of relation to society; but now, by this sudden alarm, she seemed to be again elevated on some pinnacle of social success beyond his reach. It struck him, too, as discouraging that he should be able to know so little about a girl he had loved in a vague way so long, and now for a time so ardently, and who had dwelt for months at his very door. He blamed the conventionalities of society that made it impossible for him to ask her the thousand and one questions he fain would ask, that refused him permission to ask any until he was prepared to make that offer which involved the explanation from which he shrank so much that he would fain know precisely what degree of evil he must ask her to face before he asked at all. He told himself that he shrank not so much on account of his own dislike, as on account of the difficulty in which his offer and explanation must place her if she loved him; for if she was not bound strongly by the prejudices of her cla.s.s, all those she cared for certainly were. On the other hand, if she did not love him, then, indeed, he had reason to shrink from an interview that would be the taking away of all his hope. Who would not wrestle hard with hope and fear before facing such an alternative?

Certainly not a man of Trenholme's stamp.

It is a mistake to suppose that decision and fearlessness are always the attributes of strength. Angels will hover in the equipoise of indecision while clowns will make up their minds. Many a fool will rush in to woo and win a woman, who makes her after-life miserable by inconsiderate dealings with incongruous circ.u.mstance, in that very unbending temper of mind through which he wins at first. Trenholme did not love the less, either as lover or brother, because he shrank, as from the galling of an old wound, when the family trade was touched upon. He was not a weaker man because he was capable of this long suffering. That nature has the chance to be the strongest whose sensibilities have the power to draw nourishment of pain and pleasure from every influence; and if such soul prove weak by swerving aside because of certain pains, because of stooping from the upright posture to gain certain pleasures, it still may not be weaker than the more limited soul who knows not such temptations. If Trenholme had swerved from the straight path, if he had stooped from the height which nature had given him, the result of his fault had been such array of reasons and excuses that he did not now know that he was in fault, but only had hateful suspicion of it when he was brought to the pa.s.s of explaining himself to his lady-love. The murmurs of an undecided conscience seldom take the form of definite self-accusation. They did not now; and Trenholme's suspicion that he was in the wrong only obtruded itself in the irritating perception that his trouble had a ludicrous side. It would have been easier for him to have gone to Sophia with confession of some family crime or tragedy than to say to her, "My father was, my brother is, a butcher; and I have allowed this fact to remain untold!" It was not that he did not intend to prove to her that his silence on this subject was simply wise; he still writhed under the knowledge that such confession, if it did not evoke her loving sympathy, might evoke her merriment.

That afternoon, however, he made a resolution to speak to Sophia before another twenty-four hours had pa.s.sed--a resolution which was truly natural in its inconsistency; for, after having waited for months to hear Alec's purpose, he to-day decided to act without reference to him.

At the thought of the renewed solicitation of another lover, his own love and manliness triumphed over everything else. He would tell her fully and frankly all that had made him hesitate so long, and of his long admiration for her, and how dearly he now loved her. He would not urge her; he would, leave the choice to her. This resolution was not made by any impulsive yielding to a storm of feeling, nor in the calm of determined meditation; he simply made up his mind in the course of that afternoon's occupation.

CHAPTER XVII.

Trenholme went from Mrs. Rexford's door that same day to pay some visits of duty in the village. The afternoon was warm, and exquisitely bright with the sort of dazzling brightness that sometimes presages rain. On his return he met a certain good man who was the Presbyterian minister of the place. The Scotch church had a larger following in Ch.e.l.laston than the English. The clergyman and the minister were friends of a sort, a friendship which was cultivated on chance occasions as much from the desire to exercise and display large-mindedness as from the drawings of personal sympathy. The meeting this afternoon led to their walking out of the village together; and when the Scotchman had strolled as far as the college gate, Trenholme, out of courtesy and interest in the conversation, walked a mile further up the road with him.

Very beautiful was the road on that bright summer day. They heard the ripple of the river faintly where it was separated from them by the Harmon garden and the old cemetery. Further on, the sound of the water came nearer, for there was only the wilderness of half overgrown pasture and sumac trees between them and it. Then, where the river curved, they came by its bank, road and river-side meeting in a grove of majestic pines. The ground here was soft and fragrant with the pine needles of half a century; the blue water curled with shadowed wave against matted roots; the swaying firmament was of lofty branches, and the summer wind touched into harmony a million tiny harps. Minds that were not choked with their own activities would surely here have received impressions of beauty; but these two men were engaged in important conversation, and they only gave impa.s.sive heed to a scene to which they were well accustomed.

They were talking about improvements and additions which Trenholme hoped to get made to the college buildings in the course of a few years. The future of the college was a subject in which he could always become absorbed, and it was one sufficiently identified with the best interests of the country to secure the attention of his listener. In this land, where no church is established, there is so little bitterness existing between different religious bodies, that the fact that the college was under Episcopal management made no difference to the Presbyterian's goodwill towards it. He sent his own boys to school there, admired Trenholme's enthusiastic devotion to his work, and believed as firmly as the Princ.i.p.al himself that the school would become a great university.

It was important to Trenholme that this man--that any man of influence, should believe in him, in his college, and in the great future of both.

The prosperity of his work depended so greatly upon the good opinion of all, that he had grown into the habit of considering hours well spent that, like this one, were given to bringing another into sympathy with himself in the matter of the next projected improvement. It was thus that he had advanced his work step by step since he came to Ch.e.l.laston; if the method sometimes struck his inner self as a little sordid, the work was still a n.o.ble one, and the method necessary to the quick enlargement he desired. Both men were in full tide of talk upon the necessity for a new gymnasium, its probable cost, and the best means of raising the money, when they walked out of the pine shade into an open stretch of the road.

Soft, mountainous clouds of snowy whiteness were winging their way across the brilliant blue of the sky. The brightness of the light had wiped all warm colour from the landscape. The airy shadows of the clouds coursed over a scene in which the yellow of ripened fields, the green of the woods on Ch.e.l.laston Mountain, and the blue of the distance, were only brought to the eye in the pale, cool tones of high light. The road and the river ran together now as far as might be seen, the one almost pure white in its inch-deep dust, the other tumbling rapidly, a dancing mirror for the light.

The talkers went on, unmindful of dust and heat. Then a cloud came between them and the sun, changing the hue of all things for the moment.

This lured them further. The oat harvest was ready. The reaping machines were already in the fields far and near, making noise like that of some new enormous insect of rattling throat. From roadside trees the cicada vied with them, making the welkin ring.

There were labourers at various occupations in the fields, but on the dusty stretch of road there was only one traveller to be seen in front of the two companions. When they gained upon him they recognised the old preacher who went by the name of Cameron. The poor old wanderer had been a nine days' wonder; now his presence elicited no comment. He was walking cap in hand in the sunshine, just as he had walked in the winter snow. To Trenholme the sight of him brought little impression beyond a reminder of his brother's wayward course. It always brought that reminder; and now, underneath the flow of his talk about college buildings, was the thought that, if all were done and said that might be, it was possible that it would be expedient for the future of the New College that the present princ.i.p.al should resign. This was, of course, an extreme view of the results of Alec's interference; but Trenholme had accustomed himself to look at his bugbear in all lights, the most extreme as well as the most moderate. _That_ for the future; and, for immediate agitation, there was his resolution to speak to Sophia. As he walked and talked, his heart was wrestling with multiform care.

With one of those welcome surprises which Nature can bestow, the big swinging cloud which had shadowed their bit of earth for a few minutes and then pa.s.sed off the sun again, now broke upon them in a heavy shower. They saw the rain first falling on Ch.e.l.laston Mountain, which was only about a quarter of a mile distant, falling in the sunshine like perpendicular rays of misty light; then it swept down upon them; but so bright was the sunshine the while that it took them a few minutes to realise that this dazzling shower could actually be wet. Its drenching character was made apparent by the sight of field labourers running to a great spreading maple for shelter; then they, literally having regard to their cloth, ran also and joined the group. They pa.s.sed the old man on the road, but when they were all under the tree he also came towards it.

There is no power in the art of words, or of painting, or of music, to fully describe the perfect gratefulness of a shower on a thirsty day.

The earth and all that belongs to her thrill with the refreshing, and the human heart feels the thrill just in so far as it is one with the great plan of nature, and has not cut itself off from the whole by egotism as a dead branch is cut. All under the tree were pleased in their own way. The labourers cooled their sweating brows by wiping them with the shirtsleeves the rain had wet; Trenholme and his friend saw with contentment the dust laid upon their road, listened to the chirp of birds that had been silent before, and watched the raindrops dance high upon the sunny surface of the river.

The old man came quietly to them. The rain falling through sunshine made a silver glory in the air in which he walked saintlike, his h.o.a.ry locks spangled with the shining baptism. He did not heed that his old clothes were wet. His strong, aged face was set as though looking onward and upward, with the joyful expression habitual to it.

Trenholme and his friend were not insensible to the picture. They were remarking upon it when the old man came into their midst. There was something more of keenness and brightness in his mien than was common to him; some influence, either of the healing summer or of inward joy, seemed to have made the avenues of his senses more accessible.

"Sirs," he said, "do you desire the coming of the Lord?"

He asked the question quite simply, and Trenholme, as one humours a village innocent, replied, "We hope we are giving our lives to advance His kingdom."

"But the _King,_" said the old man. "He is coming. Do you cry to Him to come quickly?"

"We hope and trust we shall see Him in His own time," said Trenholme, still benignly.

"His own time is suddenly, in the night," cried the old man, "when the Church is sleeping, when her children are planting and building, selling, buying; and marrying--that is _His time_. We shall see Him. We shall see His face, when we tell Him that we love Him; we shall hear His voice when he tells us that He loves us. We shall see Him when we pray; we shall hear Him give the answer. Sirs, do you desire that He should come now, and reign over you?"

The labourers bestirred themselves and came nearer. The old man had always the power of transmitting his excitements to others, so that, strangely, they felt it inc.u.mbent upon them to answer. One, a dull-looking man, answered "yes," with conventional piety. Another said sincerely that he would like to get the oats in first. Then, when the first effect of the enthusiast's influence was pa.s.sing off, they began to rebel at having this subject thrust upon them. A youth said rudely that, as there were two parsons there, Father Cameron was not called on to preach.

The old man fixed his questioning look on Trenholme. "He will come to reign," he cried, "to exalt the lowly and meek, to satisfy the men who hunger for righteousness; and the pure in heart shall live with Him.

Sir, do you desire that He shall come now?"

Trenholme did not give answer as before.

"Poor fellow," said the Presbyterian, pityingly.

The shower was pa.s.sing over, and they moved away.

The old man lifted his arm, and pointed to the mountain that stood in all the beauty of its wet verdure. He looked round upon them all, and there was unusual show of excitement in his manner.

"I have a message to you," he said. "Before another Lord's, day comes, _He_ will come."

The two ministers heard him as they walked away, and the Scotchman thought to go back and reprove such an audacious word.