What Necessity Knows - Lily Dougall (readera ebook reader txt) 📗

step or two about, but he gave no gesture or prayer or word of pain. "The sin lies at my door," he said.

"Well, yes, Mr. Bates, you drove me to it, but--"

Her tone, so different from his, he interrupted. "Don't say 'but,' making it out less black. Tell what ye did more."

Then she told him, coolly enough, how she had arranged the bedclothes to look as though, she slept under them: how she had got into the box because, by reason of the knot-hole in the lid, she had been able to draw it over her, and set the few nails that were hanging in it in their places. She told him how she had laughed to herself when he took her with such speed and care across the lake that was her prison wall. She told him that, being afraid to encounter Saul alone, she had lain quiet, intending to get out at Turrifs, but that when she found herself in a lonely house with a strange man, she was frightened and ran out into the birch woods, where her winding-sheet had been her concealment as she ran for miles among the white trees; how she then met a squaw who helped her to stop the coming railway train.

"We lit a fire," she said, "and the Indian woman and the children stood in the light of it and brandished; and further on, where it was quite dark, we had got a biggish log or two and dragged them across the track, so when the train stopped the men came and found them there; and I went round to the back and got on the cars when all the men were off and they didn't come near me till morning. I thought they'd find me, and I'd got money to pay, but I got mixed up with the people that were asleep. I gave the squaw one of your aunt's gold pieces for helping, but"--with a sneer--"the passengers gave her money too. I made sure she'd not tell on me, for if she had she'd have got in jail for stopping the train."

"Puir body," said he; "like enough all she had seen o' men would make her think, too, she had no call to say anything, though she must have known of the hue and cry in the place."

"More like she wanted to save herself from suspicion of what she had done," said Eliza, practically.

She still stood before him on the path, the strong firm muscles of her frame holding her erect and still without effort of her will. The stillness of her pose, the fashionableness of gown and hat, and the broad display of her radiant hair, made a painful impression on Bates as he looked, but the impression on two other men who went by just then was apparently otherwise. They were a pair of young tourists who stared as they passed.

"By Jove, what a magnificent girl!" said one to the other just before they were out of hearing. There was that of consciousness in his tone which betrayed that he thought his own accents and choice words were well worthy her attention.

Eliza turned her back to the direction in which the strangers had gone, thus covering the spare man to whom she was talking from their backward glances. Bates, who was looking up at her face with his heart-hunger in his eyes, saw a look of contempt for the passing remark flit across her face, and because of the fond craving of his own heart, his sympathy, strangely enough, went out to the young man who had spoken, rather than to her sentiment of contempt. The angel of human loves alone could tell why John Bates loved this girl after all that had passed, but he did love her.

And perceiving now that she had told what she had to tell, he turned his mind to that something that lay on his mind to say to her. With the burden of the thought he rose up again from his rude seat, and he held up his head to look at her as with effort; she was so tall, that he still must needs look up.

"All's said that need be said, Sissy, between us two." His voice was almost hard because he would not betray his wistfulness. "Ye have chosen your own way o' life, and I willna raise a cry to alter it; I'm no fit for that. If I could shape ye to my pleasure, I see now I'd make a poor thing of it. Ye can do better for yourself if--if"--his square jaw seemed almost to tremble--"if ye'll have a heart in ye, lassie. Forgive me if I seem to instruct ye, for I've no thought in me now that I could make ye better if I tried."

He stopped again, and she saw his weak frame moving nervously; she thought it was for want of breath.

"You're awfully ill, Mr. Bates," she said, in dulness repeating words that she seemed to have got by heart.

Her stupid pity stung him into further speech.

"Oh, lassie, it's not because I'm fond of ye that I say it, for what does it matter about me, but because of all the men in the world that love women. It's God's voice through them to you; and (although I can't rightly frame it into words) because God set men and women in families, and gave them to have affections, I tell ye the soul in which the pride o' life, or pleasure, or the like o' that, takes the place of the affections is a lost soul." Again his harsh mouth trembled, and the words came with effort. "Sissy Cameron, ye've not known a mother nor a sister, and your father was hard, and I who loved ye was worse than a brute, and I can't rightly say what I would; but when I'm gone, look round ye; lassie, at the best women ye know that are wives and mothers, and if ye can't greet at the things they greet at, and if ye laugh at things they don't laugh at, and if ye don't fear to do the things they fear, then, even if your cleverness should make ye queen o' the whole world, God pity ye!"

"Yes, Mr. Bates," she said, just as she used to when she said the catechism to him and he admonished her. She had listened to him with that dull half-attention which we give to good-sounding words when our heart is only alert for something for which we yet wait. She had it firmly in her mind that he was going to say something on which would hang her future fate, that he would either still ask her, in spite of all she had said, to go back with him, or would tell her that he would not have her now, as the American had done. All her sensibilities lay, as it were, numb with waiting; she had no purpose concerning the answer she would make him; her mind was still full of invective and complaint; it was also full of a dull remorse that might melt into contrition; either or both must break forth if he said that which appealed to words in her.

When Bates saw, however, that the little sermon which he had wrung from his heart with so much pain had not impressed her much, he felt as if he had never known until then the sharpest pain of sorrow, for although he did not know what he had hoped for, there had been hope in proportion to effort, and disappointment, the acutest form of sorrow, cut him to the heart. He did not moan or bewail, that was not his way. He stood holding himself stiffly, as was his wont, and pain laid emphasis on the severe and resolute lines upon his face, for a face that has long been lent as a vehicle for stern thoughts does not express a milder influence, although the depths of the heart are broken up.

She looked at his face, and the main drift of what he had said was interpreted by his look; she had expected censure and took for granted that all this was reproof.

"I don't see, Mr. Bates"--her tone was full of bitterness--"that you've got any call to stand there handing me over as if I was a leper."

To which he answered angrily, "Bairn, haven't I told you once and again that take your sin on my own soul?"

"Well then"--still in angry complaint--"what right have you to be looking and talking of me as if nothing was to be expected of me but ill?"

So he believed that it was worse than useless to speak to her. He drew his hand over his heavy eyebrows. He thought to himself that he would go home now, that he would start that day or the next and never see her again, and in the decision he began walking away, forgetting the word "good-bye" and all its courtesy, because oblivious of everything except that thought that he was unfit for anything but to go and live out his time in the desolate home. But when he had got about twenty paces from her he remembered that he had said no farewell, and turned, looked back, and came to her again, his heart beating like a boy's.

She stood where he had left her, sullen, with head slightly bent, and tearing the same leaves. Bates recognised her beauty to the full, as much as any other man could have done, but it only hurt him and made him afraid. He looked at her, timid as a child, yet manfully ignoring his timidity, he tried to smile to her as he said,

"Bairn, I may never see ye in this world again; give your old teacher a kiss."

Eliza stared, then lent her face to be kissed. She was surprised at the gentleness of his sparing caress, so surprised that when she lifted her head she stood stock still and watched him till he was out of sight, for, driven by the scourge of his feeling, he went away from her with quick, upright gait, never looking back.

She watched him till he disappeared into Trenholme's house. When she walked home she did not sob or wipe her eyes or cover her face, yet when she got to the hotel her eyes were swollen and red, and she went about her work heedless that anyone who looked at her must see the disfigurement of tears.


CHAPTER XIV.

In the latter part of that day Bates suffered a fierce attack of his malady. Everyone in Trenholme's house, including the master himself on crutches, became agile in their desire to alleviate the suffering, and he received their ministrations with that civility which denoted that, had conventionality allowed, he would not have received them; for to fling all that is given him at the heads of the givers is undoubtedly the conduct that nature suggests to a man in pain. Having need, however, of some help, Bates showed now, as before, an evident preference for Alec as an attendant, a preference due probably to the fact that Alec never did anything for him that was not absolutely necessary, and did that only in the most cursory way. When Alec entered his room that night to see, as he cheerfully remarked, whether he was alive or not, Bates turned his face from the wall.

"I think it right to tell ye," he began, and his tone and manner were so stiff that the other knew something painful was coming, "I think it right to tell ye that Eliza Cameron is alive and