Part 38 (1/2)

”Is the storm coming this way?” he said.

The man who had first answered him pointed to another. ”This gentleman,”

he said, ”has just come from Ch.e.l.laston.”

As the remark did not seem to be an answer to his question about the weather, Alec waited to hear its application. It followed.

The first man drew a little nearer. ”He's been telling us that the Adventists--that means folks that are always expecting the end of the world--all about Ch.e.l.laston believe the end's coming to-night.”

Alec made an exclamation. It was a little like hearing that some one sees a ghost at your elbow. The idea of proximity is unpleasant, even to the incredulous. ”Why to-night?” he asked.

”Well, I'll say this much of the notion's come true,” said the native of Ch.e.l.laston hastily--”it's awful queer weather--not that I believe it myself,” he added.

”Has the weather been so remarkable as to make them think that?” asked Alec.

”'Tain't the weather _made_ them think it. He only said the weather weren't unlike as if it were coming true.” As the first man said this, he laughed, to explain that he had nothing to do with the tale or its credence, but the very laugh betrayed more of a tendency to dislike the idea than perfect indifference to it would have warranted.

In defiance of this laugh the Ch.e.l.laston man made further explanation.

He said the religious folks said it was clearly written in the Book of Daniel (he p.r.o.nounced it Dannel); if you made the days it talks of years, and the weeks seven years, the end must come about this time. At first folks had calculated it would be 1843, but since then they had found they were thirty years out somehow.

”That would make it this year,” agreed the first man. Some others that had gathered round laughed in chorus. They vented some bad language to; but the Ch.e.l.laston man, excited with his tale, went on.

”All the Advent folks believe that. They believe all the good folks will be caught up in the air; and after that they're to come back, and the world will be just like the Garden of Eden for a thousand years.”

He was casting pearls before swine, for some of his hearers chanted gibes. ”Is that so?” they sang, to the notes of a response in Church music.

Night had closed in black about them. All on the platform had come together in close group. The wind-blown light of the station lamp was on their faces. In the distance the smouldering storm rumbled and flashed.

”All religious folks believe that,” continued the speaker, a little scornfully, ”and the Advents think it'll be now; but old Cameron we've had in Ch.e.l.laston for a year, he tells them it'll be to-night.”

Alec Trenholme had by this time received his brother's letters. ”A year!” interrupted he almost fiercely. ”Didn't he come in January?”

The narrator drew in the horns of his exaggeration. ”D'ye know all about him, for there's no use telling if you do?”

”I only thought you might be talking about an old man heard went there then.”

”He a'most died, or did really, somewhere below Quebec; and then he got up and preached and prayed, and his folks wouldn't keep him, so he wandered everywhere, and a kind young man we have at our place took him in and keeps him. When he was in the other world he heard the Judgment would happen to-night. Would that be the same man you know?”

”It will be the same man.”

”Did you know his people?” asked the other curiously.

But Alec had no thought of being questioned. He brought the speaker back to his place as historian, and he, nothing loth, told of the intended meeting on the mountain, and of the white ascension robes, in his ignorant, blatant fas.h.i.+on, laying bare the whole pathetic absurdity of it.

Two ribald listeners, who had evidently been in some choir, paced arm in arm, singing the responses to the Litany in melodramatic fas.h.i.+on, except when their voices were choked with loud laughter at their own wit.

Pushed by the disagreeableness of these surroundings, and by keen interest in the old man who had once visited him, Alec decided on the walk. The mountain was nearer than the village; he hoped to reach it in time. He was told to keep on the same road till he came to the river, to follow its bank for about a mile, and when he saw the buildings of a farm just under the hill, to turn up a lane which would lead him by the house to the princ.i.p.al ascent. He walked out into the night.

At first he was full of thoughts, but after walking a while, fatigue and monotony made him dull. His intelligence seemed to dwell now in his muscles rather than in his brain. His feet told him on what sort of a road he was walking; by his fatigue he estimated, without conscious thought, how far he had walked.

When he had gone for nearly two hours the storm had come so much nearer that the lightning constantly blinded his eyes. He heard now the rus.h.i.+ng of the river, and, as he turned into the road by its side, he saw the black hill looming large. Nothing but the momentum of a will already made up kept his intention turned to the climb, so unpropitious was the time, so utterly lonely the place. As it was, with quiescent mind and vigorous step, he held on down the smooth road that lay beside the swollen river.