What Necessity Knows Part 40

"Poor fellow!" muttered Alec under his breath, for he felt the poignant disappointment of the awakening.

A sweet sound made some of them turn an instant toward the wood, for a little bird, disturbed in its hiding there, lilted forth a twittering song of joy.

Its notes had not ceased when Alec heard a gasp of terror from the lady near him, and saw, as one sees an act there is no time to avert, that one of the rough fellows who were standing behind the old man had suddenly struck him down by a savage blow upon the head.

Alec Trenholme ran and sprang upon the man who had struck the blow. Some other man, he did not see which, wrested the club from the fellow's hand. In the moments Alec was grappling with him he became conscious that the old man lying near his feet on the gra.s.s was more to him than revenge, and, with the caprice of a boy who turns from what interests him less to what interests him more, he contented himself with hurling the a.s.sailant from him, so that he fell heavily down the sloping ground to where his companions stood. Then Alec pushed others aside and lifted the wounded man.

Wounded? His hair was wet with warm blood. There was something done--a good deal done, by many people--to restore him. Alec remembered afterwards that the young man who had previously spoken to him had been active, showing a more personal solicitude than was seen in the awed kindness even of the women. One lives through such scenes with little real perception of their details. He knew at last for certain that he put his burden from him, and throwing himself down laid his ear on the broad, muscular breast. Long as he listened, there was no movement there. The mad old preacher was dead.

CHAPTER XXIII.

When Alec Trenholme rose from the dead man's side he felt his shoulder taken hold of by a familiar hand. He knew at once that it was his brother. It was quite what he would have expected, that Robert should be there; it was surely his business to come after straying sheep.

The manslayer, awed and sobered by finding what he had done, had been easily overpowered. Even his comrades helped to bind him. He was a poor creature at best, and was now in the misery that comes with sudden reaction from the exaltation of strong drink.

Alec saw that his brother was limping, that he seemed in actual pain; he was anxious to know how this was, yet he did not say so. He asked rather if Robert thought that the old man had consciously awakened from his trance of expectation, and they both, in spite of all that pressed, stooped with a lantern some one had lit to look again at the dead face.

Just as he might have looked when the heavens seemed to open above him, so he looked now. They talked together, wondering who he really was, as men find words for what is easiest to say, although not relevant to the moment's necessity.

So absorbing is the interest of death to those who live in peaceful times that, now that there was a lamp, all there required to slake their curiosity by lingering gaze and comment before they would turn away.

Even the prisoner, when he saw the lantern flashed near the face of the dead, demanded to be allowed to look before they led him down the hill.

His poor wife, who had expected his violence to fall only on herself, kept by him, hysterically regretting that she had not been the victim.

Yet, although all this had taken place, it was only a short time before the energy of a few, acting upon the paralysed will of others, had cleared the ground. The white-dressed women crossed the open to the descending path, huddling together as they walked, their eyes perforce upon the rough ground over which they must pick their steps. There was many a rift now in the breaking clouds above them, but only a few turned an upward pa.s.sionate glance. Sophia moved away in their midst. Seeing her thus surrounded, Alec did not feel that he need approach.

"I don't know who she is," he said, pointing her out to Robert. "I happened, in a queer way, to come up here with her." He paused a moment.

Some sentiment such as that she was a queen among women was in his mind, but it did not rise to his lips. "She would like your help better than mine," he added. "If you will see that she and her little sister are taken care of, I will stay here"--he gave a gesture toward the corpse--"till a stretcher comes."

"I will do my best to take care of them all," Robert Trenholme answered with a sigh.

Old McNider and his little boy walked behind the women. Robert, limping as he went, lifted the sleepy child in his arms and joined himself to the company. They went under the dripping trees, down, down the dark, slippery path. The white robes hardly glimmered in the darkness. Some of the women wept; some of them held religious conversation, using such forms of expression as grow up among certain cla.s.ses of pious, people and jar terribly on unaccustomed ears. Those who talked at this time had less depth of character than those who were silent, and there was evinced in their conversation a certain pride of resistance to criticism--that is, they wished to show that if what they had looked for had not come that night, their expectation of it bad been reasonable, and that their greatest hopes would shortly be realised to the confounding of unbelievers. They did not know the manner of their spirit. Few who indulge in demonstration of piety as a relief to feeling ever perceive how easily the natural pa.s.sions can flow into this channel.

Jesus wished to try their faith, said they, but they would not cast away their lamps; no, they must keep them trimmed and burning. They could not live unless they felt that dear Jesus might come for them any night.

"Blessed be His holy Name!" cried one. "When He comes the world will see Him Whom they have despised, and His saints they have looked down on, too, reignin' together in glory. Yes, glory be to Jesus, there'll be a turnin' of the tables soon."

To Trenholme it seemed that they bandied about the sacred name. He winced each time.

One woman, with more active intellect than some of the rest, began to dilate on the signs already in the world which proved the Second Advent was near. Her tone was not one of exulted feeling, but of calm reason.

Her desire was evidently to strengthen her sisters who might be cast down. In her view all the ages of the history of the vast human race were seen in the natural perspective which makes things that are near loom larger than all that is far. The world, she affirmed, was more evil than it had ever been. In the Church there was such spiritual death as never before. The few great revivals there were showed that now the poor were being bidden from the highways to the marriage feast. And above all else, it was now proved that the coming of the Lord was nigh, because bands of the elect everywhere were watching and waiting for the great event. Her speech was well put forth in the midst of the weary descent.

She did not say more than was needed. If there were drooping hearts among her friends they were probably cheered.

Then some more emotional talkers took up the exultant strain again. It was hard for Trenholme not to estimate the inner hearts of all these women by the words that he heard, and therefore to attribute all the grace of the midnight hour to the dead.

When they got to the bottom of the hill, the farmer, at the request of men who had gone first, had another waggon in readiness to take home the women who had come to the hill on foot or who had sent away their vehicles. Many of them did not belong to the village of Ch.e.l.laston. It was evidently better that the lighter waggon which had come from Ch.e.l.laston should go round now to the outlying farms, and that all the villagers should return in that provided by the farmer. Trenholme put in the child, who was now sleeping, and helped in the women, one by one.

Their white skirts were wet and soiled; he felt this as he aided them to dispose them on the straw which had been put in for warmth. The farmer, an Englishman, made some wise, and not uncivil, observations upon the expediency of remaining at home at dead of night as compared with ascending hills in white frocks. He was a kind man, but his words made Winifred's tears flow afresh. She shrank behind the rest. Trenholme kissed her little cold hand when he had put her in. Then, last of all, he helped Sophia.

She had no words ready now to offer him by which to make amends. "You have hurt your foot?" she said.

He told her briefly that his foot had twisted under him, so that at first he had not been able to come on for the sprain, and he clasped her hand as he bade the waggon drive on.

Feeling the lack of apology on her own part she thought he had shown himself the greater, in that he had evidently pardoned her without it.

He did not feel himself to be great.

The cart jolted away. Trenholme stood in the farmyard. The light of a lantern made a little flare about the stable door. The black, huge barns, around seemed to his weary sense oppressive in their nearness.

The waggon disappeared down the dark lane. The farmer talked more roughly, now that kindness no longer restrained him, of the night's event. Trenholme leaned against a white-washed wall, silent but not listening. He almost wondered he did not faint with the pain in his ankle; the long strain he had put upon the hurt muscle rendered it almost agonising, but faintness did not come: it seldom does to those who sigh for it, as for the wings of a dove, that they may go far away with it and be at rest. The farmer shut the stable door, put out the light, and Trenholme limped out the house with him to wait for his brother.

CHAPTER XXIV.

All this time Alec was walking, like a sentry, up and down beside the old man's corpse. He was not alone. When the others had gone he found that the young American had remained with him. He came back from the lower trees whence he had watched the party disappear.

"Come to think of it," he said, "I'll keep you company."

Something in his manner convinced Alec that this was no second thought; he had had no intention of leaving. He was a slight fellow, and, apparently too tired now to wish to stand or walk longer, he looked about him for a seat. None offered in the close vicinity of the corpse and Alec, its sentinel; but, equal to his own necessity, he took a newspaper from his pocket, folded it into a small square, laid it on the wet beaten gra.s.s, and sat thereon, arching his knees till only the soles of his boots touched the ground. To Alec's eye his long, thin figure looked so odd, bent into this repeated angle, that he almost suspected burlesque, but none was intended. The youth clasped his hands round his knees, the better to keep himself upright, and seated thus a few yards from the body, he shared the watch for some time as mute as was all else in that silent place.

Alec's curiosity became aroused. At last he hesitated in his walk.

"You are from the States?"

"Well, yes; I am. But I reckon I'm prouder of my country than it has reason to be of me. I'm down in the mouth to-night--that's a fact."

A fine description of sorrow would not have been so eloquent, but exactly what he sorrowed for Alec did not know. It could hardly be for the death merely.

Alec paced again. He had made himself an uneven track in the ragged gra.s.s. Had the lineaments of the dead been more clearly seen, death would have had a stronger influence; but even as it was, death, darkness, and solitude had a language of their own, in which the hearts of the two men shared more or less.

At length the American spoke, arresting Alec's walk.

"See here," he said, "if what they say is true--and as far as I know it is--he's got up from being dead _once_ already."

The emphasis on the word "once" conveyed the suggestion which had evidently just occurred to him.

"Oh, I know all about _that_ story." Alec spoke with the scorn of superior information, casting off the disagreeable suggestion. "I was there myself."

"You were, were you? Well, so was I, and I tell you I know no more than babe unborn whether this old gentleman's Cameron or not."

Alec's mind was singularly free from any turn for speculative thought.

He intended to bring Bates to see the dead in the morning, and that would decide the matter. He saw no sense in debating a question of fact.

"I was one of the fellows in that survey," explained Harkness, "and if you're the fellow we saw at the station, as I reckon you are, then I don't know any more about this old gentleman I've been housing than you do."

Trenholme had an impulse to command silence, but, resisting it, only kept silence himself and resumed his tread over the uneven ground.