What Necessity Knows eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 574 pages of information about What Necessity Knows.

What Necessity Knows eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 574 pages of information about What Necessity Knows.

“Sophia!” There was fear in his voice.

“Have you seen Winifred?” she cried.

“Winifred?  No,” he called, back.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, breathless.  She never noticed that he had called her by name.  The abruptness of her own question was evidently atoned for by some necessity the nature of which he had not yet entirely grasped.  Yet a knowledge, gleaned too late from all the occurrences of the evening, leaped up within him to anticipate her tidings.

“Winifred has gone out since dark.  Whether she is alone or not I don’t know, but she has gone to the mountain.  She means to climb it to-night because they have told her that—­that——­”

His lady-love stopped.  Voice and language seemed alike to fail her when she essayed to tell him, and he, awed at the thought of hearing such sacred words from her lips, awed to think that the sword of this fanaticism had come so near as to strike the pure young girl who was so dear to them both, took her pause as if it had told him everything.

“How do you know?” His words were brief and stern.

She was walking on, he thought merely from excitement.  As he kept up with her he perceived, more by quickness of sympathy than by any sign, that, in her effort to speak, she had begun to weep.  She walked erect, giving no heed to her own tears nor lifting a hand to wipe them, only at first her throat refused to articulate a reply, and when she spoke it was quickly, a word or two at a time, as though she feared her voice would be traitor to her.

“She left a paper for me.”  And then she added, “She wrote on it—­what she was afraid to say—­dear child!”

He was silent a moment, listening with bowed head lest she should tell more.  He thought he saw her now dash the tears from her face.  She was walking fast, and he felt that she must not go further, also that he had no time to lose; so he told her hastily that he thought his housekeeper had gone also to the mountain, and why he thought so.  He said that he hoped and believed Winifred would be with her, and that it was not many minutes since they had driven away.  He would go at once, hoping to overtake them on the difficult ascent, and Miss Rexford, he said, must go home and send her father and brother to aid him in his search.

She never stopped in her steady walk.  “You know they are not at home.”

He was shocked to remember it.  “Never mind!” he cried, “I will go with your authority.  I will bring her back.”

Still she did not waver in her walk.  She spoke thickly out of her tears.  “You may go to find this woman who has worked for you so long; I will go for Winifred.”

“You must not come,” he said almost harshly.  “It is far too late; it is far too wet.”

He stopped to make her stop, but she only went on, getting much in front.  Then he ran up to her, laid his hand on her arm, and implored her not to go.

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Project Gutenberg
What Necessity Knows from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.