"Yes, he _did_ say it. That handsome brother of his, to whom I lost my heart two weeks ago, does really--well, to put it plainly, knock animals on the head, you know, and sell them in chops, and--what do you call it, mamma?--the sirloin and brisket. 'How do you do, Mr. Trenholme? I want some meat for dinner--chops, I think.' Oh, how I should love to go and buy chops!"

Sophia was kneeling over a pile of work, folding it. She asked the boisterous girl for the cloth she had been sewing, and her voice was hard and impatient, as if she wished the talk at an end.

Mrs. Bennett arose and wrapped her cape about her thin shoulders, not without some air of majesty. There was a bitter angry expression upon her delicate face.

"All that I wish to say in this matter is, that _I_ never knew this before; others may have been in possession of these facts, but I was not."

"If you had been, of course you would have honoured him the more for triumphing over difficulties," answered the elder Miss Brown, with smooth sarcasm.

"Yes, certainly _that_, of course; but I should have thought him very unsuitably placed as an instructor of youth and--"

The right adjustment of the cape seemed to interrupt the speech, but others mentally supplied the ending with reference to Miss Bennett.

"Miss Rexford, being one of Princ.i.p.al Trenholme's oldest friends, is not taken by surprise." Some one said this; Sophia hardly knew who it was.

She knelt upright by the packing basket and threw back her head.

"I met him often at my own uncle's house. My uncle knew him _thoroughly_, and liked him well."

Most of the women there were sensibly commenting on the amount of work done, and allotting shares for the ensuing week. It would take a week at least to rouse them to the state of interest at which others had already arrived.

Her cape adjusted, Mrs. Bennett found something else to say. "Of course, personally, it makes no difference to me, for I have always felt there was _something_ about Princ.i.p.al Trenholme--that is, that he was not--It is a little hard to express; one feels, rather than speaks, these things."

It was a lie, but what was remarkable about it was that its author did not know it for one. In the last half-hour she had convinced herself that she had always suffered in Trenholme's presence from his lack of refinement, and there was little hope that an imagination that could make such strides would not soon discover in him positive coa.r.s.eness.

As the party dispersed she was able to speak aside to Sophia.

"I see how you look upon it," she said. "There is no difference between one trade and another, or between a man who deals in cargoes of cattle and one who sells meat in a shop."--She was weakly excited; her voice trembled. "Looking down from a higher cla.s.s, we must see that, although all trades are in a sense praiseworthy, one is as bad as another."

"They seem to me very much on a level," said Sophia. There was still a hard ring in her voice. She looked straight before her.

"Of course in this country"--Mrs. Bennett murmured something half-audible about the Browns. "One cannot afford to be too particular whom one meets, but I certainly should have thought that in our pulpits--in our schools--"

She did not finish. Her thin mouth was settling into curves that bespoke that relentless cruelty which in the minds of certain people, is synonymous with justice.

It was a rickety, weather-stained chaise in which Mrs. Bennett and her daughter were to drive home. As Miss Bennett untied the horse herself, there was a bright red spot on either of her cheeks. She had made no remark on the subject on which her mother was talking, nor did she speak now. She was in love with Trenholme, that is, as much in love as a practical woman can be with a man from whom she has little hope of a return. She was not as pretty as many girls are, nor had she the advantages of dress and leisure by which to make herself attractive. She had hoped little, but in an honest, humble-minded, quiet way she had preferred this man to any other. Now, although she was as different from her mother as nature could make her, precepts with which her mind had been plied from infancy had formed her thought. She was incapable of self-deception, she knew that he had been her ideal man; but she was also incapable of seeing him in the same light now as heretofore.

Miss Bennett held the reins tight and gave her horse smart strokes of the whip. The spiritless animal took such driving pa.s.sively, as it jogged down the quiet road by the enclosure of the New College.

Unconscious that her words were inconsistent with what she had so lately said, Mrs. Bennett complained again. "My nerves have received quite a shock; I am all in a tremble." It was true; she was even wiping away genuine tears. "Oh, my dear, it's a terribly low occupation. Oh, my dear, the things I have heard they do--the atrocities they commit!"

"I daresay what you heard was true," retorted Miss Bennett, "but it does not follow that they are all alike." Without perceiving clearly the extent of the fallacy, she felt called upon to oppose the generalisations of a superficial mind.

So they pa.s.sed out of sight of Trenholme's house. Inside he sat at his desk, plunged again in the work of writing business letters. We seldom realise in what way we give out the force that is within us, or in what proportion it flows into this act or that. Trenholme was under the impression that what he had done that afternoon had been done without effort? The effort, as he realised it, had come days and weeks before.

Yet, as he worked through the hours that were left of that day's light, he felt a weariness of body and mind that was almost equivalent to a desire for death.

CHAPTER XVII.

Sophia Rexford stood and watched the last of the afternoon's company as, some driving and some on foot, they pa.s.sed in different directions along the level road. It was a very peaceful scene. The neighbourhood lay sunning itself in the last warmth of the summer, and the neighbours, to all appearance, were moving homeward in utmost tranquillity. Sophia was not at peace; she was holding stern rule over her mind, saying, "Be at peace; who hath disturbed thee?" This rule lasted not many minutes; then suddenly mutiny. "Good Heavens!" she cried within herself, "how indiscreet I have been, making friends with these men. Shall I never learn wisdom--I who have sought to direct others?" The recollections that came caused her, in the sting of mortified pride, to strike her hand with painful force against a chair near her. The bruise recalled her to calm. The chair she had struck was that large one in which Robert Trenholme had reclined. It aided her to ponder upon the man who had so lately been seen on its cushions, and, in truth, her pondering bewildered her. Why had he not said as much to her years before, and why had he now said what he did, as he did? She thought she had known this man, had fathomed him as to faults and virtues, though at some times she rated their combination more reverently than at others. Truth to tell, she had known him well; her judgment, impelled by the suggestion of his possible love, had scanned him patiently. Yet now she owned herself at fault, unable to construe the manner of this action or a.s.sign a particular motive with which it was in harmony. It is by manner that the individual is revealed (for many men may do the same deed), and a friend who perforce must know a friend only by faith and the guessing of the unseen by the seen, fastens instinctively upon signs too slight to be written in the minutest history. At this moment, as Sophia stood among the vacant seats, the scene of the conversation which had just taken place, she felt that her insight into Robert Trenholme failed her. She recalled a certain peace and contentment that, in spite of fatigue, was written on his face. She set it by what he had said, and gained from it an unreasoning belief that he was a n.o.bler man than she had lately supposed him to be; in the same breath her heart blamed him bitterly for not having told her this before, and for telling it now as if, forsooth, it was a matter of no importance. "How dare he?" Again herself within herself was rampant, talking wildly. "How dare he?" asked Anger. Then Scorn, demanded peace again, for, "It is not of importance to me," said Scorn.

Blue and Red and Winifred and the little boys came out to carry in the chairs and rugs. A cool breeze came with the reddening of the sunlight, and stirred the maple tree into its evening whispering.

As Sophia worked with the children the turmoil of her thought went on.

Something constantly stung her pride like the lash of a whip; she turned and shifted her mind to avoid it, and could not.

She had deliberately deceived her friends when she had a.s.serted that her uncle had known all Trenholme's affairs. She had not the slightest doubt now, looking back, that he had known--a thousand small things testified to it; but he had not made a confidante of her, his niece, and she knew that that would be the inference drawn from her a.s.sertion. She knew, too, that the reason her uncle, who had died soon after, had not told her was that he never dreamed that then or afterwards she would come into intimate relationship with his protege. To give the impression that he, and she also, knowing Trenholme's origin, had overlooked it, was totally false. Yet she did not regret this falsehood. Who with a spark of chivalry would not have dealt as hard a blow as strength might permit in return for so mean an attack on the absent man? But none the less did her heart upbraid the man she had defended.

Sophia stood, as in a place where two seas met, between her indignation against the spirit Mrs. Bennett had displayed (and which she knew was lying latent ready to be fanned into flame in the hearts of only too many of Trenholme's so-called friends) and her indignation against Trenholme and his history. But it was neither the one current of emotion nor the other that caused that dagger-like pain that stabbed her pride to the quick. It was not Robert Trenholme's concerns that touched her self-love.

She had gained her own room to be alone. "Heaven help me," she cried (her e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n had perhaps no meaning except that she had need of expletive), "what a fool I have been!"

She rehea.r.s.ed each meeting she had had with Alec Trenholme. How she had dallied with him in fields and on the road, seeing now clearly, as never before, how she had smiled upon him, how she had bewitched him. What mischance had led her on? She sprang up again from the seat into which she had sunk. "Mercy!" she cried in an agony of shame, "was ever woman so foolish as I? I have treated him as a friend, and he is--!"

Then for some reason, she ceased to think of herself and thought of him.

She considered: had he made no effort? had he felt no pain? She saw how he had waveringly tried to avoid her at first, and how, at last, he had tried to warn her. She thought upon the epithet he had applied to himself when trying to explain himself to her: she lifted her head again, and, in a glow of generous thought, she felt that this was a friend of whom no one need be ashamed.

The bell for the evening meal rang. There are hours in which we transcend ourselves, but a little thing brings us back to the level on which we live. As Sophia hastily brushed her dark hair, mortified pride stabbed her again, and scorn again came to the rescue. "What does it matter? It would have been better, truly, if I had had less to do with him, but what has pa.s.sed is of no importance to anyone, least of all to me!"

As she had begun at first to rule her heart, so did she rule it all that evening. But when she was again within her room alone she lingered, looking out of her small cas.e.m.e.nt at the fields where she had met Alec Trenholme, at the road where she walked with him: all was white and cold now in the moonlight. And soon she leaned her head against the pane and wept.

Those are often the bitterest tears for which we can furnish no definite cause; when courage fails, we see earth only through our tears, and all form is out of proportion, all colour crude, all music discord, and every heart a well of evil, and we bewail, not our own woes only, but the woe of the world. So this proud woman wept, and prayed G.o.d wildly to save the world out of its evil into His good--and did not, could not, tell herself what was the exciting cause of her tears.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Just as that day had turned rosy at the close and then white with the lesser light of night, so did the summer now fade away in a blaze of colour, giving one last display of what life could do before leaving the land to the shroud of the winter's snow. Cool bracing winds, of which there had already been foretaste, now swept the land. The sun seemed brighter because the air was clearer. The college boys had returned, and were heard daily shouting at their games. A few days made all this outward difference. No other difference had as yet come about.

Now that harvest was over and Captain Rexford was more at leisure, Sophia felt that she must no longer postpone the disagreeable duty of speaking to him seriously about his younger daughters. She chose an hour on Sunday when he and she were walking together to a distant point on the farm. She told the story of the flirtation of poor little Blue and Red slightly, for she felt that to slight it as much as possible was to put it in its true proportion.

"Yes," said Captain Rexford. He took off his hat and brushed back his hair nervously. He had many difficulties in his life. "Yes, and then there is Winifred."

"Girls here are not kept always under the eye of older people, as is usually considered necessary in England; but then they learn from their infancy to be more self-reliant. We have taken the safeguards of governess and schoolroom suddenly from children almost grown-up, and set them where no one has had time to look after them. They would need to have been miraculously wise if, with time on their hands, they had not spent some of it absurdly."

"Yes," he said again unhappily, "what must we do about it, my dear? Your hands are already full." He always leaned on Sophia.

"I fear there is only one thing to do. We cannot give them society; we cannot give them further education; they must have the poor woman's protection--work--to take up their time and thoughts. We have saved them from hard work until now, and it has not been true kindness."

He did not answer. He believed what she said, but the truth was very disagreeable to him. When he spoke again he had left that subject.

"I am sorry for this affair about the Trenholmes. I like Trenholme, and, of course, he has shown himself able to rise. The younger fellow is plain and bluff, like enough to what he is."

"His manners are perfectly simple, but I--I certainly never imagined--"

"Oh, certainly not; otherwise, you would hardly have received him as you did. For us men, of course, in this country--" He gave a dignified wave of his hand.