What Necessity Knows Part 44

From the kitchen came occasional clinking of cups and plates; the housekeeper had evidently not swerved from her regular work. With ears preternaturally acute, Eliza hearkened to the silence in the other rooms till some slight sound, she could hardly tell of what, led her upstairs to a certain door. She did not knock; she had no power to stand there waiting for a response; the primitive manners of the log house in which she had lived so long were upon her. She entered the room abruptly, roughly, as she would have entered the log house door.

In a long chair lay the man she sought. He was dressed in common ill-fitting clothes; he lay as only the very weak lie, head and limbs visibly resting on the support beneath them.

She crossed her arms and stood there, fierce and defiant. She was conscious of the dignity of her pose, of her improved appearance and of her fine clothes; the consciousness formed part of her defiance. But he did not even see her mood, just as, manlike, he did not see her dress.

All that he did see was that here, in actual life before him, was the girl he had lost. In his weakness he bestirred himself with a cry of fond wondering joy--"Sissy!"

"Yes, Mr. Bates, I'm here."

Some power came to him, for he sat erect, awed and reverent before this sudden delight that his eyes were drinking in. "Are you safe, Sissy?" he whispered.

"Yes," she replied, scornfully, "I've been quite safe ever since I got away from you, Mr. Bates. I've taken care of myself, so I'm quite safe and getting on finely; but I'd get on better if my feet weren't tied in a sack because of the things you made me do--you _made_ me do it, you know you did." She challenged his self-conviction with fierce intensity.

"It was you made me go off and leave your aunt before you'd got any one else to take care of her; it was you who made me take her money because you'd give me none that was lawfully my own; it was you that made me run away in a way that wouldn't seem very nice if any one knew, and do things they wouldn't think very nice, and--and" (she was incoherent in her pa.s.sion) "you _made_ me run out in the woods alone, till I could get a train, and I was so frightened of you coming, and finding me, and _telling_, that I had to give another name; and _now_, when I'm getting on in the world, I have to keep hiding all this at every turn because people wouldn't think it very pretty conduct. They'd think it was queer and get up a grand talk. So I've told lies and changed my name, and it's you that made me, Mr. Bates."

He only took in a small part of the meaning of the words she poured upon him so quickly, but he could no longer be oblivious to her rage. His joy in seeing her did not subside; he was panting for breath with the excitement of it, and his eyes gloated upon her; for his delight in her life and safety was something wholly apart from any thought of himself, from the pain her renewed anger must now add to the long-accustomed pain of his own contrition.

"But how," he whispered, wondering, "how did you get over the hills?

How?--"

"Just how and when I could. 'Twasn't much choice that you left me, Mr.

Bates. It signifies very little now how I got here. I _am_ here. You've come after the old man that's dead, I suppose. You might have saved yourself the trouble. He isn't father, if _that's_ what you thought."

He did not even hear the last part of her speech. He grasped at the breath that seemed trying to elude him.

"You went out into the woods alone," he said, pityingly. He was so accustomed to give her pity for this that it came easily. "You--you mean over our hills to the back of the--"

"No, I don't, I wasn't such a silly as to go and die in the hills. I got across the lake, and I'm here now--that's the main thing, and I want to know why you're here, and what you're going to do."

Her tone was brutal. It was, though he could not know it, the half hysterical reaction from that mysterious burst of feeling that had made her defend him so fiercely against the American's evil imputation.

She was not sufficiently accustomed to ill health to have a quick eye for it; but she began now to see how very ill he looked. The hair upon his face and head was damp and matted; his face was sunken, weather-browned, but bloodless in the colouring. His body seemed struggling for breath without aid from his will, for she saw he was thinking only of her. His intense preoccupation in her half fascinated, half discomforted her, the more so because of the feverish l.u.s.tre of his eye.

"I'm sorry you're so ill, Mr. Bates," she said, coldly; "you'd better lie down."

"Never mind about me," he whispered, eagerly, and feebly moved upon the seat to get a little nearer her. "Never mind about me; but tell me, Sissy, have you been a good girl since you got off like this? You're safe and well--have you been good?"

"I took your aunt's money, if you mean that, but I left you my half of things for it; and anyway, it was you who made me do it."

"Yes, yes," he a.s.sented, "'twas my doing; the sin of all you did then lies at my door. But since then, Sissy?" His look, his whole att.i.tude, were an eager question, but she looked at him scornfully.

"Of _course_ I've been good. I go to church and say my prayers, and every one respects me. I worked first in a family, but I didn't let them call me a servant. Then I got a place in the Grand Hotel. Old Mr.

Hutchins had got lame, so he couldn't see after things, and I could.

I've done it now for six months, and it's a different house. I always do everything I do well, so we've made money this summer. I'm thinking of making Mr. Hutchins take me into partners.h.i.+p; he'd rather do it than lose me. I'm well thought of, Mr. Bates, by everybody, and I'm going to get rich."

"Rich," he echoed, quietly. He looked now, his mind drawn by hers, at her fine clothes, and at the luxuriant red hair that was arranged with artificial display. The painfulness of his breath and his weakness returned now within his range of feeling.

Without having expected to absorb his mind or knowing that she cared to do so, she still felt that instant that something was lost to her. The whole stream of his life, that had been hers since she had entered the room, was no longer all for her. She pressed on quietly to the business she had with him, fearing to lose a further chance.

"Look here, Mr. Bates! It's not more than a few hours since I heard you were here, so I've come to tell you that I'm alive and all right, and all that I've done that wasn't very nice was your fault; but, look here, I've something else to say: I don't know why you've come here to see this old preacher, or who he is, or what you have to do with him; but it would be cruel and mean of you now, after driving me to do what I did, to tell the people here about it, and that my name isn't White, you know. I've very nice friends here, who'd be shocked, and it would do me harm. I'm not going to accuse you to people of what you've done. I'm sorry you're ill, and that you've had all the trouble of hunting for me, and all that; but I've come to ask you now to keep quiet and not say who I am."

He drew great sighs, as a wounded animal draws its breath, but he was not noticing the physical pain of breathing. He did not catch at breath as eagerly as he was trying to catch at this new idea, this new Sissy, with a character and history so different from what he had supposed. His was not a mind that took rational account of the differences between characters, yet he began to realise now that the girl who had made her own way, as this one had, was not the same as the girl he had imagined wandering helplessly among pathless hills, and dying feebly there.

She still looked at him as if demanding an answer to her request, looked at him curiously too, trying to estimate how ill he _was_. He did not speak, and she, although she did not at all fathom his feeling, knew instinctively that some influence she had had over him was lessened.

"Of course you can spoil my life if you like, Mr. Bates, but I've come to ask you not. Someone's told me there's a mine found on our clearin'--well, when I took your aunt's gold pieces I meant to leave you the land for them. I'm too proud to go back on that now, _far_ too proud; you can keep the money if you want to, or you can give me some of it if you _want_ to. I'd like to be rich better than anything, but I'd rather be poor as a church mouse, and free to get on my own way, than have you to say what I ought to do every touch and turn, thinking I'd only be good and sensible so long as I did what you told me" (there was derision in her voice). "But now, as I say, you have the chance to make me miserable if you choose; but I've come to ask you not to, although if you do, I dare say I can live it down."

He looked at her bewildered. A few moments since and all the joy bells of his life had been a-chime; they were still ringing, but jangling confusedly out of tune, and--now she was asking him to conceal the cause of his joy, that he had found her. He could not understand fully; his mind would not clear itself.

"I won't do anything to make you miserable, Sissy," he said, faintly.

"You won't tell that you've seen me, or who I am, or anything?" she insisted, half pleading, half threatening.

He turned his face from her to hide the ghastly faintness that was coming over him. "I--I oughtn't to have tried to keep you, when I did,"

he said.

"No, you oughtn't to," she a.s.sented, quickly.

"And I won't speak of you now, if that's what you want."

"Thank you," she said, wondering what had made him turn his back to her.

"You aren't very ill, are you, Mr. Bates?"

"No--you--I only can't get my breath. You'd better go, perhaps."

"Yes, I think I had," she replied.

And she went.

CHAPTER IV.

There are many difficulties in this world which, if we refuse to submit to them, will in turn be subdued by us, but a sprained ankle is not one of them. Robert Trenholme, having climbed a hill after he had twisted his foot, and having, contrary to all advice, used it to some extent the next day, was now fairly conquered by the sprain and destined to be held by this foot for many long days. He explained to his brother who the lady was whom he had taken up the hill, why he himself had first happened to be with her, and that he had slipped with one foot in a roadside ditch, and, thinking to catch her up, had run across a field and so missed the lane in the darkness. This was told in the meagre, prosaic way that left no hint of there being more to tell.

"What is she like?" asked Alec, for he had confessed that he had talked to the lady.

"Like?" repeated Robert, at a loss; "I think she must be like her own mother, for she is like none of the other Rexfords."

"All the rest of the family are good-looking."

"Yes," said Robert dreamily.

So Alec jumped to the conclusion that Robert did not consider Miss Rexford good-looking. He did not tell anything more about her or ask anything more. He saw no reason for insulting Robert by saying he had at first overheard her conversation, and that it had been continued to him after she had mistaken one for the other. He wondered over those of her remarks which he remembered, and his family pride was hurt by them. He did not conceive that Robert had been much hurt, simply because he betrayed no sign of injured feeling. Younger members of a family often long retain a curiously lofty conception of their elders, because in childhood they have looked upon them as embodiments of age and wisdom.

Alec, in loose fas.h.i.+on of thought, supposed Robert to be too much occupied by more important affairs to pay heed to a woman's opinion of him, but he cherished a dream of some day explaining to Miss Rexford that she was mistaken in his brother's character. His pulse beat quicker at the thought, because it would involve nearness to her and equality of conversation. That Robert had any special fancy for the lady never entered his mind.

Although we may be willing to abuse those who belong to us we always feel that the same or any censure coming from an outsider is more or less unjust; and, too, although the faults of near relatives grieve us more bitterly than the crimes of strangers, yet most of us have an easy-going way of forgetting all about the offence at the first opportunity. There is nothing in the world stronger than the quiet force of the family tie, which, except in case of need, lies usually so pa.s.sive that its strength is overlooked by the superficial observer. It was by virtue of this tie now that the two brothers, although they had so great a difference, although they were so const.i.tuted as to see most things very differently, found themselves glad to be in each other's company. Their hearts grew warmer by mere proximity; they talked of old family incidents, and of the incidents of the present, with equal zest.

The one thing they did not immediately mention was the subject of the quarrel about which they had not yet come to an agreement.