What Necessity Knows Part 51

They talked to the monotonous splash of the milk within, and as work was not being interrupted, Alec was at length asked to sit down on the worn doorstep, and he remained there until the b.u.t.ter "came." He had gone up in Sophia's esteem many degrees, because she saw now that any escape of warmer sentiment had been involuntary on his part. She blessed him in her heart for being at once so susceptible and so strong. She fancied that there was a shade of sadness in his coolness which lent it attraction. With that shadow of the epicurean which is apt to be found upon all civilised hearts, she felt that it did her good to realise how nice he was, just as a fresh flower or a strong wind would have done her good. She said to him that she supposed he would not be staying much longer in Ch.e.l.laston, and he replied that as soon as Bates would go and his brother was on his feet again he intended to leave for the West.

Then he begged her to lose no time in seeing Eliza, for Bates had taken to hobbling about the roads, and he thought a sudden and accidental meeting with the girl might be the death of him.

Now this a.s.sertion of Alec's, that Bates had taken to walking out of doors, was based on the fact told him by Mrs. Martha and his brother, that the day before Bates had wilfully walked forth, and after some hours came back much exhausted. "Where did you go?" Alec had asked him fiercely, almost suspecting, from his abject looks, that he had seen the girl. He could, however, learn nothing but that the invalid had walked "down the road and rested a while and come back." Nothing important had happened, Alec thought; and yet this conclusion was not true.

That which had happened had been this. John Bates, after lying for a week trying to devise some cunning plan for seeing Sissy without compromising her, and having failed in this, rose up in the sudden energy of a climax of impatience, and, by dint of short stages and many rests by the roadside, found his way through the town, up the steps of the hotel, and into its bar-room. No one could hinder him from going there, thought he, and perchance he might see the la.s.sie.

Years of solitude, his great trouble, and, lastly, the complaint which rendered him so obviously feeble, had engendered in his heart a shyness that made it terrible to him to go alone across the hotel verandah, where men and women were idling. In truth, though he was obviously ill, the people noticed him much less than he supposed, for strangers often came there; but egotism is a knife which shyness uses to wound itself with. When he got into the shaded and comparatively empty bar-room, he would have felt more at home, had it not been for the disconsolate belief that there was one at home in that house to whom his presence would be terribly unwelcome. It was with a nightmare of pain and desolation on his heart that he laid trembling arms upon the bar, and began to chat with the landlord.

"I'm on the look-out for a young man and a young woman," said he, "who'll come and work on my clearing;" and so he opened talk with the hotel-keeper. He looked often through the door into the big pa.s.sage, but Sissy did not pa.s.s.

Now Mr. Hutchins did not know of anyone to suit Bates's requirements, and he did know that the neighbourhood of Ch.e.l.laston was the most unlikely to produce such servants, but, having that which was disappointing to say, he said it by degrees. Bates ordered a gla.s.s of cooling summer drink, and had his pipe filled while they discussed. The one tasted to him like gall, and the fumes of the other were powerless to allay his growing trepidation, and yet, in desperate adventure, he stayed on.

Hutchins, soon perceiving that he was a man of some education, and finding out that he was the oft-talked-of guest of "The Princ.i.p.al,"

continued to entertain him cheerfully enough. "Now," said he, "talking of people to help, I've got a girl in my house now--well, I may say I fell on my feet when I got her." Then followed a history of his dealings with Eliza, including an account of his own astuteness in perceiving what she was, and his cleverness in securing her services. Bates listened hungrily, but with a pang in his heart.

"Aye," said he outwardly, "you'll be keeping a very quiet house here."

"You may almost call it a religious house," said Hutchins, taking the measure of his man. "Family prayer every Sunday in the dining-room for all who likes. Yes," he added, rubbing his hand on his lame knee, "Canadians are pious for the most part, Mr. Bates, and I have the illeet of two cities on _my_ balconies."

Other men came in and went out of the room. Women in summer gowns pa.s.sed the door. Still Bates and Hutchins talked.

At last, because Bates waited long enough, Eliza pa.s.sed the door, and catching sight of him, she turned, suddenly staring as if she knew not exactly what she was doing. There were two men at the bar drinking.

Hutchins, from his high swivel chair, was waiting upon them. They both looked at Eliza; and now Bates, trembling in every nerve, felt only a weak fear lest she should turn upon him in wrath for being unfaithful, and summoned all his strength to show her that by the promise with which he had bound himself he would abide. He looked at her as though in very truth he had never seen her before. And the girl took his stony look as if he had struck her, and fell away from the door, so that they saw her no longer.

"Looked as if she'd seen someone she knew in here," remarked Hutchins, complacently. He was always pleased when people noticed Eliza, for he considered her a credit to the house.

The others made no remark, and Bates felt absurdly glad that he had seen her, not that it advanced his desire, but yet he was glad; and he had shown her, too, that she need not fear him.

And Eliza--she went on past the door to the verandah, and stood in sight of the boarders, who were there, in sight of the open street; but she did not see anyone or anything. She was too common a figure at that door to be much noticed, but if anyone had observed her it would have been seen that she was standing stolidly, not taking part in what was before her, but that her white face, which never coloured prettily like other women's, bore now a deepening tint, as if some pale torturing flame were lapping about her; there was something on her face that suggested the quivering of flames.

In a few minutes she went back into the bar-room.

"Mr. Hutchins," she said, and here followed a request, that was almost a command, that he should attend to something needing his oversight in the stable-yard.

Hutchins grumbled, apologised to Bates; but Eliza stood still, and he went. She continued to stand, and her att.i.tude, her forbidding air, the whole atmosphere of her presence, was such that the two men who were on the eve of departure went some minutes before they otherwise would have done, though perhaps they hardly knew why they went.

"Mr. Bates! You're awfully angry with me, Mr. Bates, I'm afraid."

He got up out of his chair, in his petty vanity trying to stand before her as if he were a strong man. "Angry!" he echoed, for he did not know what he said.

"Yes, you're angry; I know by the way you looked at me," she complained sullenly. "You think I'm not fit to look at, or to speak to, and--"

They stood together in the common bar-room. Except for the gay array of bottles behind the bar the place was perfectly bare, and it was open on all sides. She did not look out of door or windows to see who might be staring at them, but he did. He had it so fixed in his faithful heart that he must not compromise her, that he was in a tremor lest she should betray herself. He leaned on the back of his chair, breathing hard, and striving to appear easy.

"No, but I'm thinking, Sissy--"

"You're dreadfully ill, Mr. Bates, I'm afraid."

"No, but I was thinking, Sissy, I must see ye again before I go. I've that to say to ye that must be said before I go home."

"Home!" She repeated the word like the word of a familiar language she had not heard for long. "Are you going home?"

"Where will ye see me?" he urged.

"Anywhere you like," she said listlessly, and then added with sudden determination, "I'll come."

"Hoots!" he said, "_where_ will ye come?"

"Where?" she said, looking at him keenly as if to gauge his strength or weakness. "You're not fit to be much on your feet."

"Can you come in the bush at the back of the college? It would be little harm for you to speak to me there. When can ye come?"

"To-morrow morning."

"How can ye come of a morning? Your time's not your own."

"I say I'll come." She enunciated the words emphatically as Hutchins's crutches were heard coming near the door. Then she left the room.

CHAPTER XIII.

The wood behind the college grounds and Captain Rexford's pasture had appeared to Bates to be a place possessed only by the winds of heaven and by such sunshine and shadow as might fall to its share. He had formed this estimate of it while he had lain for many days watching the waving of its boughs from out his window, and therefore he had named it to Eliza as a place where he could talk to her. Eliza well knew that this wood was no secluded spot in the season of summer visitors, but she was in too reckless a mood to care for this, any more than she cared for the fact that she had no right to leave the hotel in the morning. She left that busy house, not caring whether it suffered in her absence or not, and went to the appointed place, heedless of the knowledge that she was as likely as not to meet with some of her acquaintances there. Yet, as she walked, no one seeing her would have thought that this young woman had a heart rendered miserable by her own acts and their legitimate outcome. In her large comeliness she suggested less of feeling than of force, just as the gown she wore had more pretension to fashion than to grace.

When she entered the wood it was yet early morning. Bates was not there.

She had come thus early because she feared hindrance to her coming, not because she cared when he came. She went into the young spruce fringes of the wood near the Rexford pasture, and sat down where she had before sat to watch Princ.i.p.al Trenholme's house. The leaves of the elm above her were turning yellow; the sun-laden wind that came between the spruce shades seemed chill to her; she felt cold, an unusual thing for her, and the time seemed terribly long. When she saw Bates coming she went to the more frequented aisles of the trees to meet him.

Bates had never been a tall man, but now, thin and weak, he seemed a small one, although he still strove to hold himself up manfully. His face this day was grey with the weariness of a sleepless night, and his enemy, asthma, was hard upon him--a man's asthma, that is a fierce thing because it is not yielded to gracefully, but is struggled against.

"Oh, but you're ill, Mr. Bates," she said, relapsing into that repeated expression of yesterday.

"I'm no so ill as I--I seem," he panted, "but that's neither here--nor there."

This was their greeting. Round them the gra.s.s was littered by old picnic papers, and this vulgar marring of the woodland glade was curiously akin to the character of this crucial interview between them, for the beauty of its inner import was overlaid with much that was common and garish. A rude bench had been knocked together by some picnicker of the past, and on this Bates was fain to sit down to regain his breath. Sissy stood near him, plucking at some coloured leaves she had picked up in her restlessness.

"You think of going back to the old place," she said, because he could not speak.

"Aye."

"Miss Bates is keeping pretty well?"--this in conventional tone that was oddly mortised into the pa.s.sionate working of her mind.

"Oh, aye."

"Why wouldn't you sell it and live in a town?"

"It's the only air there I can be breathing," said he; the confession was wrung from him by his present struggle for breath. "I'm not fit for a town."