What Necessity Knows Part 15

"How's the stove going?" then he asked. He escorted her into the shop, and superintended her little purchases in a good-natured, elder-brother fas.h.i.+on. That done, he carried the elder child across the road again, and Eliza went upon her way back down the long narrow pavement, with the children at her side.

She had shown nothing to the young man but composed appreciation of his conduct. She was, however, conscious that he would not have been so kind to any girl he happened to meet. "He admires me," thought Eliza to herself. For all that, she was not satisfied with the encounter. She felt that she had not played her part well; she had been too--had been too--she did not know what. She thought if she had held her head higher and shown herself less thankful--yes, there had been something amiss in her behaviour that ought to be corrected. She could not define what she had done, or ought to have done. How could she? An encounter of this sort was as new to her as Mrs. Rexford's sewing machine, which she had not yet been allowed to touch. Yet had she been shut up alone with the machine, as she was now shut up to revise her own conduct within herself, she would, by sheer force of determined intelligence, have mastered its intricacy to a large degree without asking aid. And so with this strong idea that she must learn how to act differently to this young man; dim, indeed, as was her idea of what was lacking, or what was to be gained, she strove with it in no fear of failure.

She raised her head as she walked, and recast the interview just past in another form more suited to her vague ideal, and again in another. She had a sense of power within her, that sense which powerful natures have, without in the least knowing in what direction the power may go forth, or when they will be as powerless--as Samson shaven. She only felt the power and its accompanying impulses; she supposed that in all ways, at all times, it was hers to use.

In a day or two Cyril Harkness met Eliza in the street again, and took occasion to speak to her. This time she was much less obliging in her manner. She threw a trifle of indifference into her air, looking in front of her instead of at him, and made as if she wished to proceed.

Had this interview terminated as easily as the other, she would have been able to look back upon it with complete satisfaction, as having been carried on, on her part, according to her best knowledge of befitting dignity; but, unfortunately for her, the young American was of an outspoken disposition, and utterly untrammelled by those instincts of conventionality which Eliza had, not by training, but by inheritance from her law-abiding and custom-loving Scotch ancestry.

"Say," said he, "are you mad at anything?"

He gained at least this much, that she instantly stared at him.

"If you aren't angry with me, why should you act crusty?" he urged. "You aren't half as pleasant as t'other day."

Eliza had not prepared herself for this free speaking, and her mind was one that moved slowly.

"I must take the children home," she said. "I'm not angry. I wasn't pleasant that I know of."

"You ought to be pleasant, any way; for I'm your best friend."

Eliza was not witty, and she really could not think of an answer to this astonis.h.i.+ng a.s.sertion. Again she looked at him in simple surprise.

"Well, yes, I am; although you don't know it. There isn't man round Turriffs who has the least idea in the world where you are, for your friends left you asleep when they came out with the old gentleman; when I twigged how you got off I never told a word. Your father had been seen" (here he winked) "near Dalhousie, wandering round! But they won't find you unless I tell them, and I won't."

"Won't find me unless you tell them," repeated Eliza slowly, the utmost astonishment in her tone. "Who?"

So vague and great was the wonder in her voice that he brought his eyes to interrogate hers in sudden surprise. He saw only simple and strong interest on the face of a simple and strong country girl. He had expected a different response and a different expression.

He put his tongue in the side of his cheek with the air of an uncontrolled boy who has played a trump-card in vain. "Say," said he, "didn't you, though?"

"Didn't I?" said Eliza, and after a minute she said, "What?"

The young man looked at her and smiled. His smile suggested a cunning recognition that she was deceiving him by pretended dulness.

At this Eliza looked excessively offended, and, with her head aloft, began to push on the little sleigh with the baby in it.

"Beg your pardon, ma'am," he said with sudden humility, but with a certain lingering in his voice as if he could not relinquish his former idea as suddenly as he wished to appear to do. "I see I've made a mistake."

Eliza hesitated in her onward movement. "But what was it you were going to tell about me?" She spoke as if she had merely then remembered how the conversation began.

His recantation was now complete. "Nothing; oh, nothing. T'was just my fun, miss."

She surveyed him with earnest disapprobation.

"You're not a very sensible young man, I'm afraid."

She said this severely, and then, with great dignity, she went home.

The young man lingered for a minute or two by the snow piles in front of the hotel where they had been standing. Then he went into the hotel with the uncertain step that betokens an undecided mind. When he got to the window he looked out at her retreating figure--a white street with this grey-clad healthy-looking girl walking down it, and the little red box-sleigh with the baby in it which she pushed before her. He was quite alone, and he gave vent to an emphatic half-whisper to himself.

"If she did it, she's a magnificent deep one--a magnificent deep one."

There was profound admiration in his voice.

That evening it was Mrs. Rexford who happened to wipe the tea-things while Eliza washed them.

"That young Mr. Harkness, the dentist--" began Eliza.

"Yes," said Mrs. Rexford, alert.

"Twice when I've been to the shop he's tried to make himself pleasant to me and the children. I don't suppose he means any harm, but he's not a sensible young man, I think."

"You're a very sensible girl, Eliza," said Mrs. Rexford, with quick vigour and without any sense of contrast.

"It doesn't matter to me," went on Eliza, "for I don't answer him more than I can help; but if he was to talk to the other girls when they go out, I suppose they'd know not to notice him too much."

Mrs. Rexford was one of those people who get accustomed to circ.u.mstances in the time that it takes others to begin to wonder at them. She often took for granted now that Eliza would consider her daughters as, entirely on a level with herself, but less sensible. It might not be wholly agreeable; neither, to Mrs. Rexford's mind, was it agreeable to have the earth covered with snow for four months of the year; but she had ceased wondering at that phenomenon a minute after she had first read of it in a book of travels, and all the ever-fresh marvel of its glossy brightness had, failed to bring fresh comment to her lips, or to make her mind more familiar with the idea. In the same way, she had accepted Eliza's position and character as a complex fact which, like the winter, had advantages and disadvantages. Mrs. Rexford put up with the latter, was thankful for the former, and wasted no more thoughts on the matter.

Eliza's last remark, however, was a subject for consideration, and with Mrs. Rexford consideration was speech.

"Dear me!" she said. "Well!" Then she took a few paces backward, dish-cloth and dish still in hand, till she brought herself opposite the next room door. The long kitchen was rather dark, as the plates were being washed by the light of one candle, but in the next room Captain Rexford and his family were gathered round a table upon which stood lamps giving plenty of light.

The mother addressed the family in general. "The dentist," said she, "talks to Eliza when she goes to the shop. Blue and Red! if he should speak to you, you must show the same sense Eliza did, and take not the slightest notice."

Sophia had asked what the dentist said to Eliza, and Mrs. Rexford had reproved the girls for laughing, while the head of the family prepared himself to answer in his kindly, leisurely, and important way.

"To 'take not the slightest notice' is, perhaps, requiring more of such young heads than might be possible. It would be difficult even for me to take no notice whatever of a young man who accosted me in a place like this. Severity, mild displeasure, or a determination not to speak, might be shown."

"If necessary," said Sophia; "but--"

"If _necessary_," the father corrected himself, emphasizing his words with a gentle tap of his fingers on the table. "I only mean if necessary, of course."

"People have such easy-going ways here," said Sophia. "Don't you think, mamma, a little ordinary discretion on the girls' part would be enough?

Blue and Red have too much sense, I suppose, to treat him as an equal; but they can be polite."

Eliza, overhearing this, decided that she would never treat the young American as an equal, although she had no idea why she should not.

Let it not be supposed that Mrs. Rexford had idled over the dish she was wiping. The conversation was, in fact, carried on between the family in the bright sitting-room and an intermittent appearance of Mrs. Rexford at the door of the shady kitchen. Twice she had disappeared towards Eliza's table to get a fresh plate and come again, rubbing it.

"Ah, girls," she now cried, "Sophia is always giving you credit for more sense than I'm afraid you possess. No giggling, now, if this young fellow should happen to say 'good morning.' Just 'good morning' in return, and pa.s.s on--nothing more."

The father's leisurely speech again broke in and hushed the little babble.

"Certainly, my dear daughters, under such circ.u.mstances as your mother suggests; to look down modestly, and answer the young man's salutation with a little primness, and not to hesitate in your walk--that, I should think, is perhaps the course of conduct your mother means to indicate."

"It strikes me," said Harold, the eldest son, "a good deal depends on what he _did_ say to Eliza. Eliza!"

This last was a shout, and the girl responded to it, so that there were now two figures at the door, Mrs. Rexford drying the dish, and Eliza standing quite quietly and at ease.