L. Dougall

“ Sophia stood, as in a place where two seas met, between her indignation against the spirit Mrs. Bennett had displayed (and which she knew was lying latent ready to be fanned into flame in the hearts of only too many of Trenholme's so-called friends) and her indignation against Trenholme and his history. But it was neither the one current of emotion nor the other that caused that dagger-like pain that stabbed her pride to the quick. It was not Robert Trenholme's concerns that touched her self-love.
She had gained her own room to be alone. ”

“ Two strong young firs, with snow upon their shelving branches, formed gateposts. The long broad road was white as their footpath had been.
Sophia answered: "There is no virtue in what I do, for, had I the choice, I certainly should not be their nursemaid."
"Do you know," he said, "I think when we see life in its reality, instead of in its seeming, we shall find that the greatest deeds have been done just because their doers believe that they could not do otherwise."
"I don't see that. If circumstances shut us up to doing certain things, there is no virtue in doing them. ”

“ Little need had he of map or guide to mark the turning or crossing of his road; the gap in the hills was clear to his eyes fifteen miles away; the world was white, and he strode across it. When the earth is made up of pearl-dust and sunshine, and the air is pure as the air of heaven, the heart of man loses all sense of effort, and action is as spontaneous as breath itself. Trenholme was half-way to the hills before he felt that he had begun his day's journey.
When he got past the unbroken snow of the farm lands and the blueberry flats, the white surface was broken by the tops of brushwood. ”

“ The words that fell in small talk from the women were not unlike the colour of these fading leaves—useless, but lending softness to the hour.
"And your sewing-party will quite bear the palm for this season, Mrs. Rexford, quite the palm; for no other has been honoured by the presence of the Principal."
It was Mrs. Bennett who spoke; her upright carriage, thin nose, and clear even voice, carried always the suggestion of mild but obstinate self-importance.
The birdlike little hostess, confused by the misapplied praise, remonstrated. "'Tis Mrs. Brown," cried she, "who bears the palm." ”

“ Humility does not demand that we should think ill of ourselves, but that we should not think of ourselves at all. When Sophia lost sight of herself she saw the gate of Paradise. After that she was at one again with the sunshine and the breeze and the birds, with the rapture of the day and the land, and she ceased to think why she acted, or whether it was right or wrong. The best and worst hours of life are in themselves irresponsible, the will hurled headlong forward by an impulse that has gathered force before. ”

“ Her great masses of hair, left loose apparently from this last visit, were thrown down her back in a moment, and Eliza, looking-glass in hand, sat herself sideways on a chair, and disposed her hair so that it hung with shining copper glow like a curtain behind her pale profile. "What do I look like, Miss Sophia?"
"Like what you are, Eliza—a handsome girl."
"Then why shouldn't I marry a rich man? It would be easier than drudging here, and yet I thought it was grand to be here last year. It's easy enough to get up in the world." ”

“ A convent cell would not have appeared to her half so far removed from all that belongs to the pride of life; and lives there anyone who has so wholly turned from that hydra-headed delight as not to shrink, as from some touch of death, from fresh relinquishment? Her pulses stirred to those strains of life's music that call to emulation and the manifold pomps of honour; and, whatever might be the reality, in her judgment the wife of Alec Trenholme must renounce all that element of interest in the world for ever. Our sense of distinction poises its wings on the opinion of men ”

“ The black, huge barns, around seemed to his weary sense oppressive in their nearness. The waggon disappeared down the dark lane. The farmer talked more roughly, now that kindness no longer restrained him, of the night's event. Trenholme leaned against a white-washed wall, silent but not listening. He almost wondered he did not faint with the pain in his ankle; the long strain he had put upon the hurt muscle rendered it almost agonising, but faintness did not come: it seldom does to those who sigh for it, as for the wings of a dove, that they may go far away with it and be at rest. ”

“ 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 bump clumsily against the baggage-room door and a hand fumble at its latch. There was enough light shining 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. ”

“ Sophia was terribly roused by the torrent of feeling that was now pouring forth, not more in words than in silent force, from the young woman who stood over her.
"Go!" she cried, "go to such people. Marry the man who cares for your hair and your good looks. Urge him on to make money, and buy yourself clothes and carriages and houses. I have no doubt you can do it! I tell you, Eliza Cameron, such things are not much worth picking up at a gift, let alone selling the nicer part of yourself for them!" ”

“ Round the new railway station at the cross-roads near Turrifs Settlement, the low-lying land, for miles and miles, was covered with, blueberry bushes; bramble thickets were here and there; and where the land rose a little, in irregular places, young birch woods stood. If the snow had sprinkled here, as it had upon the hills the night before, there was no sign of it now. The warm colour of the land seemed to glow against the dulness of the afternoon, not with the sparkle and brightness which colour has in sunshine, but with the glow of a sleeping ember among its ashes. ”

“ Now, there are three eras of romance in human life. The first is childhood, when, even if the mind is not filled with fictitious fairy tales which clothe nature, life is itself a fairy tale, a journey through an unexplored region, an enterprise full of effort and wonder, big with hope, an endless expectation, to which trivial realisations seem large. It was in this era that the younger Rexford children, up to Winifred, still lived; they built snow-men, half-expecting, when they finished them in the gloaming, that the thing of their creation would turn and pursue them ”

“ Her mind glanced to Robert Trenholme. "No," she thought, "he loves me not." She meditated on him a little. Such thoughts, however transient, in a woman of twenty-eight, are different from the same thoughts when they come to her at eighteen. If she be good, they are deeper, as the river is deeper than the rivulet; better, as the poem of the poet is better than the songs of his youth. Then for some reason—the mischief of idleness, perhaps—Sophia thought of Trenholme's young brother—how he had looked when he spoke to her over the fence. ”

“ From this she fell a-thinking upon her own life as, in the light of Trenholme's letter, the contrast of her present womanly self with the bright, audacious girl of that past time was set strongly before her. It is probably as rare for any one really to wish to be the self of any former time—to wish to be younger—as it is really to wish to be any one else. Sophia certainly did not dream of wishing to be younger. We are seldom just to ourselves—either past or present: Sophia had a fine scorn for what she remembered herself to have been ”

“ She stood up with folded arms, strength and energy in the stillness of her attitude. She heard the sound of carpenter's tools coming from the shed into which Bates had retired. No other hint of humanity was in the world to which she listened, which she surveyed. As she folded her arms she folded her bright coloured old shawl about her, and seemed to gather within its folds all warmth of colour, all warmth of feeling, that was in that wild, desolate place. ”

“ There are times when, to a man, time is not, when the life of years is gathered into indefinite moments; and after, when outward things claim again the exhausted mind, he wonders that the day is not further spent. And Trenholme wondered at the length of that afternoon, when he observed it again and saw that the sun had not yet sunk low, and as he measured the shadows that the bright trees cast athwart the moving water, he was led away to think the thoughts that had been his when he had so lightly come into those gay autumn bowers. ”

“ You don't know what an honest man is, so how could you believe in one?"
"I've a real soft heart; I hate to see you cry, Eliza."
"Well, Mr. Bates hasn't a soft heart at all; he's as unkind as can be; but he's as much above you, with all your softness, as light is above boot blacking."
She was not good-looking in her tears. She was not modest in her anger; all the crude rude elements of her nature broke forth. She wrenched the door open although with obstinate strength he tried to keep it shut, desiring stupidly to comfort her. She cast him aside as a rough man might push a boy. ”

“ Eliza awoke with a start. She raised herself up stiff and chilly. She looked back upon her dream, at first with confusion and then with contempt. She lit her lamp and the present was around her again.
"No, I will not go," she said to herself. The words had been conned in her fit of rudeness to Sophia Rexford that day, but now they had a wider meaning.
All sweet influences sent out from Heaven to plead with human hearts withdrew for the time, for—such an awful thing is life—we have power to repulse God. ”

“ If ceremony and the united sentiment of many hearts have impressive effect, they yet tend to lighten the burden of individual responsibility, which presses with weight, like the weight of the atmosphere upon a vacuum, when a man tries to grapple with his own soul in solitude.
Alec Trenholme was spending another wakeful night in the living-room of his small railway station. Winter lay around him. For a month the blueberry flats and bramble thickets had been wholly lost under the snow, which stretched far whiter than the pure white of the birch trees in the nearest groves. ”

“ Sophia Rexford had set herself, like many a saint of olden and modern times, to crush within her all selfishness; and the result had been the result of all such effort when it is staunch and honest—to show that that against which she was warring was no mere mood or bad habit, to be overcome by directing the life on a nobler plan, but a living thing, with a vitality so strong that it seemed as if God Himself must have given it life. ”

“ Very beautiful was the road on that bright summer day. They heard the ripple of the river faintly where it was separated from them by the Harmon garden and the old cemetery. Further on, the sound of the water came nearer, for there was only the wilderness of half overgrown pasture and sumac trees between them and it. Then, where the river curved, they came by its bank, road and river-side meeting in a grove of majestic pines. The ground here was soft and fragrant with the pine needles of half a century; the blue water curled with shadowed wave against matted roots ”

“ Trenholme crossed the path and strode through flowery tangle and woody thicket like a giant in sudden strength, snapping all that offered to detain his feet. He sought, he knew not why, the murmur and the motion of the river; and where young trees stood thickest, as spearsmen to guard the loneliness of its bank, he sat down upon a rock and covered his face, as if even from the spirits of solitude and from his own consciousness he must hide. ”

“ Blue and Red and Winifred and the little boys came out to carry in the chairs and rugs. A cool breeze came with the reddening of the sunlight, and stirred the maple tree into its evening whispering.
As Sophia worked with the children the turmoil of her thought went on. Something constantly stung her pride like the lash of a whip; she turned and shifted her mind to avoid it, and could not.
She had deliberately deceived her friends when she had asserted that her uncle had known all Trenholme's affairs. ”

“ As she sat now, speaking out of a full heart, there came a colour and light that gave an ethereal charm to her handsome face. There was no one there to see it; Eliza Cameron was not susceptible to beauty. God, who created beauty in flowers and women, and knew to the full the uses thereof, did not set flowers in gardeners' shows nor women in ball-rooms.
Sophia had spoken strongly, vividly, of the vanity of what men call success, and the emptiness of what they call wealth, but Eliza, self-centred, did not enter into this wide theme. ”

“ The young man looked off across the basin of the frozen lake. What is more changeful than the blue of the sky? Today the far firmament looked opaque, an even, light blue, as if it were made of painted china. The blue of Alec Trenholme's eyes was very much like the sky; sometimes it was deep and dark, sometimes it was a shadowy grey, sometimes it was hard and metallic. A woman having to deal with him would probably have imagined that something of his inward mood was to be read in these changes ”

“ Eliza lived her last interview with Bates over and over again, until she put out her light, and sat by her bedside alone in the darkness, and wondered at herself and at all things, for his farewell was like a lens through which she looked and the proportion of her world was changed.
There is strange fascination in looking at familiar scenes in unfamiliar aspect. Even little children know this when, from some swinging branch, they turn their heads downwards, and see, not their own field, but fairyland. ”

“ It is a mistake to suppose that decision and fearlessness are always the attributes of strength. Angels will hover in the equipoise of indecision while clowns will make up their minds. Many a fool will rush in to woo and win a woman, who makes her after-life miserable by inconsiderate dealings with incongruous circumstance, in that very unbending temper of mind through which he wins at first. Trenholme did not love the less, either as lover or brother, because he shrank, as from the galling of an old wound, when the family trade was touched upon. ”