What Necessity Knows | Page 8

marriage, and he
felt increasing annoyance that it should be so. Naturally enough, a deep
undercurrent of vexation was settling in his mind towards her for
feeling that antagonism, but he was vexed also with himself for having
suggested the fresh source of contest just now to complicate the issue
between them as to whether she should remain where she was, at any
rate for the present. Remain she must; he was clear upon that point. The
form of his religious theories, long held in comparative isolation from
mankind, convinced him, whether truly or not, that humanity was a
very bad thing; she should not leave his protection, and he was
considerate enough to desire that, when the time came for launching the
boat which was to take her father's body to burial, he should not need to
detain her by force.
The girl set an ill-cooked supper before Bates and the hired man, and
would not herself eat. As Bates sat at his supper he felt drearily that his
position was hard; and, being a man whose training disposed him to
vaguely look for the cause of trial in sin, wondered what he had done
that it had thus befallen him. His memory reverted to the time when, on
an emigrant ship, he had made friends with the man Cameron who that
day had died, and they had agreed to choose their place and cast in their
lot together. It had been part of the agreement that the aunt who
accompanied Bates should do the woman's work of the new home until
she was too old, and that Cameron's child should do it when she was
old enough.
The girl was a little fat thing then, wearing a red hood. Bates, uneasy in
his mind both as to his offer of marriage and her resentment, asked
himself if he was to blame that he had begun by being kind to her then,

that he had played with her upon the ship's deck, that on their land
journey he had often carried her in his arms, or that, in the years of the
hard isolated life which since then they had all lived, he had taught and
trained the girl with far more care than her father had bestowed on her.
Or was he to blame that he had so often been strict and severe with her?
Or was he unjust in feeling now that he had a righteous claim to respect
and consideration from her to an almost greater extent than the dead
father whose hard, silent life had showed forth little of the proper
attributes of fatherhood? Or did the sin for which he was now being
punished lie in the fact that, in spite of her constant wilfulness and
frequent stupidity, he still felt such affection for his pupil as made him
unwilling, as he phrased it, to seek a wife elsewhere and thus thrust her
from her place in the household. Bates had a certain latent contempt for
women; wives he thought were easily found and not altogether
desirable; and with that inconsistency common to men, he looked upon
his proposal to the girl now as the result of a much more unselfish
impulse than he had done an hour ago, before she exclaimed at it so
scornfully. He did not know how to answer himself. In all honesty he
could not accuse himself of not having done his duty by the girl or of
any desire to shirk it in the future; and that being the case, he grew
every minute more inclined to believe that the fact that his duty was
now being made so disagreeable to him was owing, not to any fault of
his, but to the naughtiness of her disposition.
The hired man slept in an outer shed. When he had gone, and Bates
went up to his own bed in the loft of the log-house, the last sound that
he heard was the girl sobbing where she lay beside the old woman in
the room below. The sound was not cheering.
The next day was sunless and colder. Twice that morning Sissy
Cameron stopped Bates at his work to urge her determination to leave
the place, and twice he again set his reasons for refusal before her with
what patience he could command. He told her, what she knew without
telling, that the winter was close upon them, that the winter's work at
the lumber was necessary for their livelihood, that it was not in his
power to find her an escort for a journey at this season or to seek
another home for her. Then, when she came to him again a third time,

his anger broke out, and he treated her with neither patience nor good
sense.
It was in