What Necessity Knows by Lily Dougall (read aloud .TXT) 📖

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 passed 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 assign 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 nobler 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 asserted 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 assertion. 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 ejaculation had perhaps no meaning except that she had need of expletive), "what a fool I have been!"

She rehearsed 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 passed 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 casement 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 God 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.

"Are you sure of that, papa,--that I would not have received him?" It was exactly what she had been saying to herself for days; but, now that another said it, the sentiment involved seemed weak.

"I am aware"--his tone was resigned--"that your opinions are always more radical than I can approve. The extreme always seems to have, shall I say, some attraction for you; but still, my daughter, I believe you are not lacking in proper pride."

"I am too proud to think that for a good many days I have liked a man who was not fit for my liking. I prefer to believe that he is fit until I can have more conclusive proof to the contrary."

Captain Rexford walked some minutes in sterner silence. He had long ceased to regard Sophia as under his authority.

"Still I hope, my dear, the next time you see this young man--rudeness, of course, being impossible to you, and unnecessary--still I hope you will allow your manner to indicate that a certain distance must be preserved."

Her own sense of expediency had been urging this course upon her, but she had not been able to bring her mind to it.

"I should