Part 20 (1/2)
Most men have more religion at heart, latent or developed, than can be seen by others. When they have not, when what shows is as much as what is--G.o.d pity them!
Alec Trenholme was not given to self-dissection or to expression of his private sentiments, therefore neither to himself nor to others was the religion of him very visible. Nevertheless, this evening his books, which had become not less but more to him because he had read them often, palled upon his taste. When he was a boy his father had taught him that at New Year's time one ought to consider whether the past had been spent well, and how the future could be spent better. So, as time went on, he pushed his books further and set himself to this consideration. For a while he sat looking at his own doings only by the light, as it were, of two candles--the one, of expediency; the other, of rect.i.tude. Had he been wise? Had he been good?
Not being of a contemplative or egotistical disposition, he soon fidgeted. Thinking he heard a sound outside, which might be wind rising, or might be the distant approach of the iron snow-plough, he got up to look out. The small panes of his window were so obscured by frostwork that he did not attempt to look through the gla.s.s, but opened his door.
Far or near there was no sign of rising wind or coming engine; only, above, the glowing stars, with now and then a shaft of northern light pa.s.sing majestically beneath them, and, below, the great white world, dim, but clearly seen as it reflected the light. The constellations attracted his attention. There hung Orion, there the Pleiades, there those mists of starlight which tell us of s.p.a.ce and time of which we cannot conceive. Standing, looking upwards, he suddenly believed himself to be in the neighbourhood of G.o.d.
When the keen air upon his bare head had driven him indoors, he sat down again to formulate his good resolutions, he found that his candles of expediency and morality had gone out. The light which was there instead was the Presence of G.o.d; but so diffused was this light, so dim, that it was as hard for him now to see distinction between right and wrong as it would have been outside upon the snow to see a shadow cast by rays which had left their stars half a century before. All, all of which he could think seemed wrong, because it was not G.o.d; all, all of which he could think seemed right, because it was part of G.o.d. The young man's face sank on his arms and lay buried there, while he thought, and thought, and thought, trying to bring a life of which he could think into relation with that which is unthinkable.
Was ever reverie more vain! He raised his head and stared about him. The glaring lamp showed all the details of the room, and made it seem so real, so much more real than mere thoughts, let alone that of which one cannot think. He got up to alter the stove-damper, pus.h.i.+ng it shut with a clatter of iron, burning his fingers slightly, and sat down again, feeling it a relief to know, if by the smart, that he had touched something.
The wood within the stove ceased blazing when the damper was shut, and when its crackling was silenced there was a great quiet. The air outside was still; the flame of the lamp could hardly make sound. Trenholme's watch, which lay on the table, ticked and seemed to clamour for his attention. He glanced down at it. It was not very far from midnight.
Just then he heard another sound. It was possibly the same as that which came to him an hour ago, but more continuous. There was no mistaking this time that it was an unusual one. It seemed to him like a human voice in prolonged ejaculatory speech at some distance.
Startled, he again looked out of his door. At first he saw nothing, but what he had seen before--the world of snow, the starry skies. Yet the sound, which stopped and again went on, came to him as if from the direction in which he looked. Looking, listening intently, he was just about to turn in for his coat and snow-shoes in order to go forth and seek the owner of the voice, when he perceived something moving between him and the nearest wood--that very birch wood in which, more than a month before, he had sought for the man Cameron who had disappeared from his own coffin. In an instant the mood of that time flashed back on him as if there had been nothing between.
All the search that had been made for Cameron in the first days of the snow had resulted in nothing but the finding of his coa.r.s.e winding-sheet in this birch wood. Then and since, confused rumours had come that he was wandering from village to village, but no one had been brave enough to detain him. Trenholme knew that people on the railway line to the south believed firmly that the old man was still alive, or that his ghost walked. Now, as his eyes focussed more intently upon the moving thing, it looked to him like a man.
Again he heard the sound of a voice, a man's voice certainly. It was raised for the s.p.a.ce of a minute in a sort of chant, not loud enough for him to hear any word or to know what language was spoken.
”Hi!” cried Trenholme at the top of his voice. ”Hi, there! What do you want?”
There was no doubt that a man out there could have heard, yet, whatever the creature was, it took not the slightest notice of the challenge.
As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light he saw that the figure was moving on the top of the deep snow near the outskirts of the wood--moving about in an aimless way, stopping occasionally, and starting again, raising the voice sometimes, and again going on in silence. Trenholme could not descry any track left on the snow; all that he could see was a large figure dressed in garments which, in the starlight, did not seem to differ very much in hue from the snow, and he gained the impression that the head was thrown back and the face uplifted to the stars.
He called again, adjuring the man he saw to come at once and say why he was there and what he wanted. No attention was paid to him; he might as well have kept silent.
A minute or two more and he went in, shut and bolted his door, even took the trouble to see that the door of the baggage-room was secured.
He took his lamp down from the wall where, by its tin reflector, it hung on a nail, and set it on the table for company. He opened the damper of the stove again, so that the logs within crackled. Then he sat down and began to read the Shakespeare he had pushed from him before. What he had seen and heard seemed to him very curious. No obligation rested upon him, certainly, to go out and seek this weird-looking creature. There was probably nothing supernatural, but--well, while a man is alone it is wisest to shut out all that has even the appearance of the supernatural from his house and from his mind. So Trenholme argued, choosing the satirical fool of the Forest of Arden to keep him company.
”Now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at home, I was in a better place: but travellers must be content.”
Trenholme smiled. He had actually so controlled his mind as to become lost in his book.
There was a sound as if of movement on the light snow near by and of hard breathing. Trenholme's senses were all alert again now as he turned his head to listen. When the moving figure had seemed so indifferent to his calls, what reason could it have now for seeking his door--unless, indeed, it were a dead man retracing his steps by some mysterious impulse, such as even the dead might feel? Trenholme's heart beat low with the thought as he heard a heavy body b.u.mp clumsily against the baggage-room door and a hand fumble at its latch. There was enough light s.h.i.+ning through his window to have shown any natural man that the small door of his room was the right one by which to enter, yet the fumbling at the other door continued.
Trenholme went into the dark baggage-room and heard the stir against the door outside. He went near it. Whoever was there went on fumbling to find some way of entrance.
By this time, if Trenholme had suffered any shock of dismay, he had righted himself, as a s.h.i.+p rights itself after shuddering beneath a wave. Clearly it now came within his province to find out what the creature wanted; he went back into his room and opened its outer door.
Extending beyond the wall, the flooring of the house made a little platform outside, and, as the opening of the door illuminated this, a man came quietly across the threshold with clumsy gait. This man was no ghost. What fear of the supernatural had gathered about Trenholme's mind fell off from it instantly in self-scorn. The stranger was tall and strong, dressed in workman's light-coloured clothes, with a big, somewhat soiled bit of white cotton worn round his shoulders as a shawl.
He carried in his hand a fur cap such as Canadian farmers wear; his grey head was bare. What was chiefly remarkable was that he pa.s.sed Trenholme without seeming to see him, and stood in the middle of the room with a look of expectation. His face, which was rugged, with a glow of weather-beaten health upon it, had a brightness, a strength, an eagerness, a sensibility, which were indescribable.
”Well?” asked Trenholme rather feebly; then reluctantly he shut the door, for all the cold of the night was pouring in. Neither of him nor of his words or actions did the old man take the slightest notice.
The description that had been given of old Cameron was fulfilled in the visitor; but what startled Trenholme more than this likeness, which might have been the result of mere chance, was the evidence that this man was not a person of ordinary senses and wits. He seemed like one who had pa.s.sed through some crisis, which had deprived him of much, and given him perhaps more. It appeared probable, from his gait and air, that he was to some extent blind; but the eagerness of the eyes and the expression of the aged face were enough to suggest at once, even to an unimaginative mind, that he was looking for some vision of which he did not doubt the reality and listening for sounds which he longed to hear.