What Necessity Knows ... New edition

Front matter

printed from American plates AT THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. EY L. DOUGALL AUTHOR OF " BEGGARS ALL," ETC, NEW EDITION LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET Eo ifflg Broker JOHN REDPATH DOUGALL THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED WITH REVERENCE AND AFFECTION PKEFACE. One episode of this story may need a word of explanation. It is reported that while the " Millerite " or Advent - ist excitement of 1843 was agitating certain parts of North America, in one place at least a little band of white-robed people ascended a hill in sure expectation of the Second Advent, and patiently returned to be the laughing stock of their neighbours. This tradition, as I heard it in my childhood, was repeated as if it embodied nothing but eccentricity and absurdity, yet it naturally struck a child's mind with peculiar feelings of awe and pathos.

Such an event appeared picturesque matter for a story. It was not easy to deal with; for in setting it, as was necessary, in close relation to the gain-getting, marrying and giving in marriage, of the people among whom it might occur, it was difficult to avoid either giving it a poetic emphasis which it would not appear to have in reality or degrading it by that superficial truth often called realism, which belittles men. Any unworthiness in the working out of the incident is

Preface

. due, not so much to lack of dignity in the subject, or to lack of material, as to the limitations of the writer's capacity. Lest any of my countrymen should feel that this story is wanting in sympathy with them, I may point out that it does not happen to deal with Canadians proper, but with immigrants, most of whom are slow to identify themselves with their adopted country; hence their point of view is here necessarily set forth. I would take this opportunity to express my obligation to my fellow-worker, Miss M. S. Earp, for her constant and sympathetic criticism and help in composition. L. D. Edinburgh, June, 1893.

Introduction

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"It is not often that what we call the 'great sorrows of life ' cause us the greatest sorrow. Death, acute disease, sudden and great losses — these are sometimes easily borne compared with those intricate difficulties which, without name and without appearance, work themselves into the web of our daily life, and, if not rightly met, corrode and tarnish all its brightness." So spoke Robert Trenholme, Principal of the New College and Rector of the English church at Chellaston, in the Province of Quebec. He .sat in his comfortable library. The light of a centre lamp glowed with shaded ray on books in their shelves, but shone strongly on the faces near it. As Trenholme spoke his words had all the charm lent by modulated voice and manner, and a face that, though strong, could light itself easily with a winning smile.

He was a tall, rather muscular man ; his face had that look of battle that indicates the nervous temperament. He was talking to a member of his congregation who had called to ask advice and sympathy concerning some carking domestic care. The advice had already been given, and the clergy man proceeded to give the sympathy in the form above. His listener was a sickly-looking man, who held by the hand a little boy of five or six years. The child, pale and sober, regarded with incessant interest the prosperous and energetic man who was talking to its father. "Yes, yes," replied the troubled visitor, "yes, there's some help for the big troubles, but none for the small — you're right there." "No," said the other, "1 did not say there was no help. It is just those complex difficulties for which we feel the help of our fellow-men is inadequate that ought to teach us to find out how adequate is the help of the Divine Man, our Saviour, to all our needs."

" Yes, yes," said the poor man again, " yes, I suppose what you say is true." But he evidently did not suppose so. He sidled to the door, cap in hand. The clergyman said no more. He was one of those sensitive men who often know instinctively whether or not their words find response in the heart of the hearer, and to whom it is always a pain to say anything, even the most trivial, which awakes no feeling common to both. Trenholme himself showed the visitors out of his house with a genial, kindly manner, and when the departing footsteps had ceased to crunch the garden path he still stood on his verandah, looking after the retreating figures and feeling somewhat depressed — not as we might suppose St. Paul would have felt depressed, had he, in like manner, taken the Name for which he lived upon his lips in vain — and to render that name futile by reason of our spiritual insignifi cance is surely the worst form of profanity— but he felt depressed in the way that a gentleman might who, having various interests at heart, had failed in a slight attempt to promote one of them.

It was the evening of one of the balmy days of a late Indian summer. The stars of the Canadian sky had faded and become invisible in the light of a moon that hung low and glorious, giving light to the dry, sweet-scented haze of autumn air. Trenholme looked out on a neat garden plot and beyond, in the same enclosure, upon lawns of rago-ed dry-looking grass, in the centre of which stood an ugly brick house, built apparently for some public purpose. This was the immediate outlook. Around, the land was undulating; trees were abundant, and were more apparent in the moonlight than the flat field spaces between them. The graceful lines of leafless elms at the side of the main road were clearly seen. About half a mile away the lights of a large village were visible, but bits of walls and gable ends of white houses stood out brighter in the moonlight than the yellow lights within the windows.

Where the houses stretched themselves up on a low hill, a little white church showed clear against the broken shadow of low growing pines. As Trenholme was surveying the place dreamily in the wonderful light, that light fell also upon him and his habitation. He was apparently intellectual, and had in him something of the idealist. For the rest, he was a good sized, good-looking man, between thirty and forty years of age, and even by the moonlight one might see, from the form of his clothes, that he was dressed with fastidious care. The walls and verandah of his house, which were of wood, glistened almost as brightly with white paint as the knocker and doorplate did with brass lacquer. After a few minutes, Trenholme's housekeeper, a wiry, sad-eyed woman, came to see why the door was left open.

When she saw the master of the house she retired in abrupt, angular fashion, but the suggestion of her errand recalled him from his brief relaxation. In his study he again sat down before the table where he had been talking to his visitors. From the leaves of his blotting-paper he took a letter which he had apparently been interrupted in writing. He took it out in a quick, business like way, and dipped his pen in the ink as though to finish rapidly ; but then he sat still until the pen dried, and no further word had been added. Again he dipped his pen, and again let it dry. If the first sentence of the letter had taken as long to compose as the second, it was no wonder that a caller had caused an interruption. The letter, as it lay before him, had about a third of its page written in a neat, forcible hand.

The arms of his young college were printed at the top. He had written : — My dear brother, — I am very much concerned not to have heard from you for so long. I have written to your old address in Montreal, but received no answer. Here came the stop. At last he put pen to paper and went on : — Even though we have disagreed as to what occupation is best for you to follow, and also as to the degree of reserve that is desirable as to what our father did, you must surely know that there is nothing I desire more than your highest welfare. After looking at this sentence for a little while he struck his pen through the word "highest," and then, offended with the appearance of the obliteration, he copied this much of the letter on a fresh sheet and again stopped. When he continued, it was on the old sheet.

He made a rough copy of the letter — writing, crossing out, and rewrit ing. It seemed that the task to which he had set himself was almost harder than could appear possible, for, as he became more absorbed in it, there was evidence of discomfort in his attitude, and although the room was not warm, the moisture on his forehead became visible in the strong light of the lamp above him. At length, after preliminary pauses had been followed by a lengthened period of vigor ous writing, the letter was copied, and the writer sealed it with an air of obvious relief. That done, he wrote another letter, the composition of which, although it engaged his care, was apparently so much pleasanter, that perhaps the doing of it was chosen on the same principle as one hears a farce after a tragedy, in order to sleep the more easily.

This second letter was to a lady. When it was written Trenholme pulled an album from a private drawer and looked long and with interested attention at the face of the lady to whom he had written. It was the face of a young, handsome girl, who bore herself proudly. The fashion of the dress would have suggested to a calculating mind that the portrait had been taken some years before; but what man who imagines himself a lover, in regarding the face of the absent dear one in the well-known picture, adds in thought the marks of time? If he had been impartial he would have asked the portrait if the face from which it was taken had grown more proud and cold as the years went by, or more sad and gentle — for, surely, in this work-a-day world of ours, fate would not be likely to have gifts in store that would wholly satisfy those eager, ambitious eyes ; but, being a man no wiser than many other men, he looked at the rather faded photograph with considerable pleasure, and asked no questions.

It grew late as he contemplated the lady's picture, and, moreover, he was not one, under any excuse, to spend much time in idleness. He put away his album, and then, having personally locked up his house and said good-night to his housekeeper, he went upstairs. Yet, in spite of all that Trenholme's pleasure in the letter and the possession of the photograph might betoken, the missive, addressed to a lady named Miss Rexford, was not a love-letter. It ran thus : — I cannot even feign anger against "Dame Fortune," that, by so unexpected a turn of her wheel, she should be even now bringing you to the remote village where for some time I have been forced to make my home, and where it is very probable I shall remain for some yeara longer. I do, of course, unfeignedly regret the financial misfortune which, as I understand, has made it necessary for Captain Rexford to bring you all out to this young country ; yet to me the pleasure of expecting such neighbours must far exceed any other feeling with which I regard your advent.

I am exceedingly glad if I have been able to be of service to Cap tain Rexford in making his business arrangements here, and hope all will prove satisfactory. I have only to add that, although you must be prepared for much that you will find different from English life, much that is rough and ungainly and uncomfortable, you may feel confident that, with a little patience, the worst roughness of colonial life will soon be overcome, and that you will find compensation a thousand times over in the glorious climate and cheerful prospects of this new land. As I have never had the pleasure of meeting Captain and Mrs. Rexford, I trust you will excuse me for addressing this note of wel come to you, whom I trust I may still look upon as a friend. I have not forgotten the winter when I received encouragement and counsel from you, who had so many to admire and occupy you that, looking back now, I feel it strange that you should have found time to bestow in mere kindness.

Here there followed courteous salutations to the lady's father and mother, brothers and sisters. The letter was signed in friendly style and addressed to an hotel in Hali fax, where apparently it was to await the arrival of the fair stranger from some other shore. It is probable that, in the interfacings of human lives, events are happening every moment which, although bearing according to present knowledge no possible relation to our own lives, are yet to have an influence on our future and make havoc with our expectations. The train is laid, the fuse is lit, long before we know it. That night, as Robert Trenholme sealed his letters, an event took place that was to test by a strange influence the lives of these three people — Robert Trenholme, the lady of whom he thought so pleasantly, and the young brother to whom he had written so laboriously.

And the event was that an old settler, who dwelt in a remote part of the country, went out of his cabin in the delusive moonlight, slipped on a steep place, and fell, thereby receiving an inward hurt that was to bring him death.

Chapter II

The Indian summer, that lingers in the Canadian forest after the fall of the leaves, had passed away. The earth lav frozen, ready to bear the snow. The rivers, with edge of chap, ii] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 9 thin ice upon their quiet places, rolled, gathering into the surface of their waters the cold that would so soon create their crystal prison. The bright sun of a late November day was shining upon a small lake that lay in the lonely region to the west of the Gaspe Peninsula near the Matapediac Valley. There was one farm clearing on a slope of the wild hills that encircled the lake. The place was very lonely. An eagle that rose from the fir-clad ridge above the clearing might from its eminence, have seen other human habitations, but such sight was denied to the dwellers in the rude log-house on the clearing.

The eagle wheeled in the air and flew southward. A girl standing near the log-house watched it with discon tented eyes. The blue water of the lake, with ceaseless lapping, cast up glinting reflections of the cold sunlight. Down the hillside a stream ran to join the lake, and it was on the more sheltered slope by this stream, where grey-limbed maple trees grew, that the cabin stood. Above and around, the steeper slopes bore only fir trees, whose cone-shaped or spiky forms, sometimes burnt and charred, sometimes dead and grey, but for the most part green and glossy, from shore and slope and ridge pointed always to the blue zenith. The log-house, with its rougher sheds, was hard by the stream's ravine. About the other sides of it stretched a few acres of tilled land. Round this land the maple wood closed, and under its grey trees there was a tawny brown carpet of fallen leaves from which the brighter autumn colours had already faded.

Up the hillside in the fir wood there were gaps where the trees had been felled for lumber, and about a quarter of a mile from the house a rudelv built lumber slide descended to the lake. It was about an hour before sundown when the eagle had risen and fled, and the sunset light found the girl who had watched it still standing in the same place. All that time a man had been talking to her; but she herself had not been talking, she had given him little reply. The two were not close to the house; large, square-built piles of logs, sawn and split for winter fuel, separated them from it. The man leaned against the wood now ; the girl stood upright, leaning on nothing. Her face, which was healthy, was at the same time pale. "Her hair was very red, and she had much of it. She was a large, strong young woman.

She looked larger and stronger than the man with whom she was conversing. He was a thin, haggard fellow, not at first noticeable in the landscape, for his clothes and beard were faded and worn into colours of earth and wood, so that Nature seemed to have dealt with him as she deals with her most defenceless creatures, caus ing them to grow so like their surroundings that even their enemies do not easily observe them. This man, however, was not lacking in a certain wiry physical strength, nor in power of thought or of will. And these latter powers, if the girl possessed them, were as yet only latent in her, for she had the heavy and undeveloped appearance of backward youth. The man was speaking earnestly. At last he said : — " Come now, Sissy, be a good lassie and say that ye're content to stay.

Ye've always been a good lassie and done what I told ye before." His accent was Scotch, but not the broad Scotch of an entirely uneducated man. There was sobriety written in the traits of his face, and more — a certain quality of intel lectual virtue of the higher stamp. He was not young, but he was not yet old. "I haven't," said the girl sullenly. He sighed at her perverseness. " That's not the way I remember it. I'm sure, from the time ye were quite a wee one, ye have always tried to please me. We all come short sometimes; the thing is, what we are trying to do." He spoke as if her antagonism to what he had been saying, to what he was yet saying, had had a painful effect upon him which he was endeavouring to hide. The girl looked over his head at the smoke that was CHAP. Il] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 11 proceeding from the log-house chimney.

She saw it curl and wreathe itself against the cold blue east. It was white wood smoke, and as she watched it began to turn yellow in the light from the sunset. She did not turn to see whence the yellow ray came. "Now that father's dead, I won't stay here, Mr. Bates." She said "I won't" just as a sullen, naughty girl would speak. " 'Twas hateful enough to stay while he lived, but now you and Miss Bates are nothing to me." "Nothing to ye, Sissy?" The words seemed to come out of him in pained surprise. " I know you've brought me up, and taught me, and been far kinder to me than father ever was; but I'm not to stay here all my life because of that." " Bairn, I have just been telling ye there is nothing else ye can do just now. I have no ready money. Your father had nothing to leave ye but his share of this place; and, so far, we've just got along year by year, and that's all.

I'll work it as well as I can, and, if ye like, ye're welcome to live free and lay by your share year by year till ye have something to take with ye and are old enough to go away. But if ye go off now ye'll have to live as a servant, and ye couldn't thole that, and I couldn't for ye. Ye have no one to protect ye now but me. I've no friends to send ye to. What do ye know of the world? It's unkind — ay, and it's wicked too." "How's it so wicked? You're not wicked, nor father, nor me, nor the men — how's people outside so much wickeder?" Bates's mouth — it was a rather broad, powerful mouth — began to grow hard at her continued contention, perhaps also at the thought of the evils of which he dreamed. " It's a very evil world," he said, just as he would have said that two and two made four to a child who had dared to question that fact.

"Ye're too young to understand it now: ye must take my word for it." She made no sort of answer; she gave no sign of yielding; but, because she had made no answer, he, self-willed and opinionated man that he was, felt assured that she had no answer to give, and went on to talk as if that one point were settled. "Ye can be happy here if ye will only think so. If we seem hard on ye in the house about the meals and that, I'll try to be better tempered. Ye haven't read all the books we have yet, but I'll get more the first chance if ye like. Come, Sissy, think how lonesome I'd be without ye! " He moved his shoulders nervously while he spoke, as if the effort to coax was a greater strain than the effort to teach or command. His manner might have been that of a father who wheedled a child to do right, or a lover who sued on his own behalf; the better love, for that matter, is much the same in all relations of life.

This last plea evidently moved her just a little. "I'm sorry, Mr. Bates," she said. " What are ye sorry for, Sissy?" "That I'm to leave you." "But ye're not going. Can't ye get that out of your head? How will ye go? " "In the boat, when they take father." At that the first flash of anger came from him. " Ye won't go, if I have to hold ye by main force. I can't go to bury your father. I have to stay here and earn bread and butter for you and me, or we'll come short of it. If ye think I'm going to let ye go with a man I know little about " His voice broke off in indignation, and as for the girl, whether from sudden anger at being thus spoken to, or from the conviction of disappointment which had been slowlv forcing itself upon her, she began to cry. His anger van ished, leaving an evident discomfort behind.

He stood before her with a weary look of effort on his face, as if he were casting all things in heaven and earth about in his mind to find which of them would be most likely to afford her comfort, or at least, to put an end to tears which, per- CHAP. 11] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 13 haps for a reason unknown to himself, gave him excessive annoyance. "Come, Sissy" — feebly — -"give over." But the girl went on crying, not loudly or passionately, but with no sign of discontinuance, as she stood there, large and miserable, before him. He settled his shoulders obsti nately against the wood pile, thinking to wait till she should speak or make some further sign. Nothing but strength of will kept him in his place, for he would gladly have fled from her. He had now less guidance than before to what was passing in her mind, for her face was more hidden from his sight as the light of the sinking sun focussed more exclusively in the fields of western sky behind her.

Then the sun went down behind the rugged hills of the lake's other shore; and, as it sank below their sharp out lines, their sides, which had been clear and green, became dim and purple; the blue went out of the waters of the lake, they became the hue of steel touched with iridescence of gold; and above the hills, vapour that had before been almost invisible in the sky, now hung in upright layers of purple mist, blossoming into primrose yellow on the lower edges. A few moments more and grey bloom, such as one sees on purple fruit, was on these vast hangings of cloud that grouped themselves more largely, and gold flames burned on their fringes. Behind them there were great empty reaches of lambent blue, and on the sharp edge of the shadowed hills there was a line of fire. It produced in Bates unthinking irritation that Nature should quietly go on outspreading her evening magnificence in face of his discomfort.

In ordinary light or darkness one accepts the annoyances of life as coming all in the day's work ; but Nature has her sublime moments in which, if the sensitive mind may not yield itself to her delight, it is forced into extreme antagonism, either to her or to that which withholds from joining in her ecstasy. Bates was a man sensitive to many forces, the response to which within him was not openly acknowledged to himself. He was [book i WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 14 familiar with the magnificence of sunsets in this region, but his mind was not dulled to the marvel of the coloured glory in which the daylight so often culminated. He looked off at the western sky, at first chiefly conscious of the unhappy girl who stood in front of him and irritated by that intervening shape; but, as his vision wandered along the vast reaches of illimitable clouds and the glorious gulfs of sky, his mind yielded itself the rather to the beauty and light.

More dusky grew the purple of the upper mists whose upright layers, like league-long wings of softest feather held edge downward to the earth, ever changed in form without apparent movement. More sparkling glowed the gold upon their edges. The sky beneath the cloud was now like emerald. The soft darkness of purple slate was on the hills. The lake took on a darker shade, and daylight began to fade from the upper blue. It was only perhaps a moment — one of those moments for which time has no measurement — that the soul of this man had gone out of him, as it were, into the vastness of the sunset; and when he recalled it his situation took on for him a somewhat different aspect. He experienced some thing of that temporary relief from personal responsibility that moments of religious sentiment often give to minds that are unaccustomed to religion.

He had been free for the time to disport himself in something infinitely larger and wider than his little world, and he took up his duty at the point at which he had left it with something of this sense of freedom lingering with him. He was a good man — that is, a man whose face would have made it clear to any true observer that he habitually did the right in contradistinction to the wrong. He was, moreover, religious, and would not have been likely to fall into any delusion of mere sentiment in the region of religious emotion. But that which deludes a man commonly comes through a safe channel. As a matter of fact, the excitement which the delight of the eye had produced in him was a perfectly wholesome feeling, but the largeness of heart it gave him at that moment was unfortunate. CHAP. Il] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 15 The girl stood just as before, ungainly and without power of expression because undeveloped, but excitation of thought made what she might become apparent to him in that which she was.

He became more generous towards her, more loving. "Don't greet, that's a good lassie," he said soothingly. " There's truth in what ye have said — that it's dull for ye here because ye have nothing to look ahead to. Well, I'll tell ye what I didn't mean to tell ye while ye are so young — when ye're older, if ye're a good lassie and go on learning your lessons as ye have been doing, I will ask ye to marry me, and then (we hope of course to get more beforehand wi' money as years go) ye will have more interest and " " Marry ! " interrupted the girl, not strongly, but speaking in faint wonder, as if echoing a word she did not quite understand. "Yes," he went on with great kindliness, "I talked it over with your father before he went, and he was pleased. I told him that, in a year or two, if he liked it, I would marry ye — it's only if ye like, of course; and ye'd better not think about it now, for ye're too young."

" Marry me ! " This time the exclamation came from her with a force that was appalling to him. The coarse hand kerchief which she had been holding to her eyes was with drawn, and with lips and eyes open she exclaimed again : " Marry me ! You ! " It was remarkable how this man, who so far was using, and through long years had always used, only the tone of mentor, now suddenly began to try to justify himself with almost childlike timidity. " Your father and I didn't know of any one else here abouts that would suit, and of course we knew ye would naturally be disappointed if ye didn't marry." He went on muttering various things about the convenience of such an arrangement. She listened to nothing more than his first sentence, and began to move away from him slowly a few steps backwards ; then, perceiving that she had come to the brink of the level ground, she turned and suddenly stretched out her arm with almost frantic longing toward the cold, grey lake and the dark hills behind, where the fires of the west still struggled with the encroaching November night.