The Williamson place, where Eric boarded, was on the crest of the
succeeding hill. He liked it as well as Larry West had prophesied that
he would. The Williamsons, as well as the rest of the Lindsay people,
took it for granted that he was a poor college student working his way
through as Larry West had been doing. Eric did not disturb this belief,
although he said nothing to contribute to it.
The Williamsons were at tea in the kitchen when Eric went in. Mrs.
Williamson was the “saint in spectacles and calico” which Larry West had
termed her. Eric liked her greatly. She was a slight, gray-haired woman,
with a thin, sweet, high-bred face, deeply lined with the records of
outlived pain. She talked little as a rule; but, in the pungent country
phrase she never spoke but she said something. The one thing that
constantly puzzled Eric was how such a woman ever came to marry Robert
Williamson.
She smiled in a motherly fashion at Eric, as he hung his hat on the
white-washed wall and took his place at the table. Outside of the
window behind him was a birch grove which, in the westering sun, was
a tremulous splendour, with a sea of undergrowth wavered into golden
billows by every passing wind.
Old Robert Williamson sat opposite him, on a bench. He was a small, lean
old man, half lost in loose clothes that seemed far too large for him.
When he spoke his voice was as thin and squeaky as he appeared to be
himself.
The other end of the bench was occupied by Timothy, sleek and
complacent, with a snowy breast and white paws. After old Robert had
taken a mouthful of anything he gave a piece to Timothy, who ate it
daintily and purred resonant gratitude.
“You see we’re busy waiting for you, Master,” said old Robert. “You’re
late this evening. Keep any of the youngsters in? That’s a foolish way
of punishing them, as hard on yourself as on them. One teacher we had
four years ago used to lock them in and go home. Then he’d go back in
an hour and let them out--if they were there. They weren’t always. Tom
Ferguson kicked the panels out of the old door once and got out that
way. We put a new door of double plank in that they couldn’t kick out.”
“I stayed in the schoolroom to do some work,” said Eric briefly.
“Well, you’ve missed Alexander Tracy. He was here to find out if you
could play checkers, and, when I told him you could, he left word for
you to go up and have a game some evening soon. Don’t beat him too
often, even if you can. You’ll need to stand in with him, I tell you,
Master, for he’s got a son that may brew trouble for you when he starts
in to go to school. Seth Tracy’s a young imp, and he’d far sooner be in
mischief than eat. He tries to run on every new teacher and he’s run
two clean out of the school. But he met his match in Mr. West. William
Tracy’s boys now--you won’t have a scrap of bother with THEM. They’re
always good because their mother tells them every Sunday that they’ll
go straight to hell if they don’t behave in school. It’s effective. Take
some preserve, Master. You know we don’t help things here the way Mrs.
Adam Scott does when she has boarders, ‘I s’pose you don’t want any of
this--nor you--nor you?’ Mother, Aleck says old George Wright is having
the time of his life. His wife has gone to Charlottetown to visit her
sister and he is his own boss for the first time since he was married,
forty years ago. He’s on a regular orgy, Aleck says. He smokes in the
parlour and sits up till eleven o’clock reading dime novels.”
“Perhaps I met Mr. Tracy,” said Eric. “Is he a tall man, with gray hair
and a dark, stern face?”
“No, he’s a round, jolly fellow, is Aleck, and he stopped growing pretty
much before he’d ever begun. I reckon the man you mean is Thomas Gordon.
I seen him driving down the road too. HE won’t be troubling you with
invitations up, small fear of it. The Gordons ain’t sociable, to say the
least of it. No, sir! Mother, pass the biscuits to the Master.”
“Who was the young fellow he had with him?” asked Eric curiously.
“Neil--Neil Gordon.”
“That is a Scotchy name for such a face and eyes. I should rather have
expected Guiseppe or Angelo. The boy looks like an Italian.”
“Well, now, you know, Master, I reckon it’s likely he does, seeing
that that’s exactly what he is. You’ve hit the nail square on the head.
Italyun, yes, sir! Rather too much so, I’m thinking, for decent folks’
taste.”
“How has it happened that an Italian boy with a Scotch name is living in
a place like Lindsay?”
“Well, Master, it was this way. About twenty-two years ago--WAS it
twenty-two, Mother or twenty-four? Yes, it was twenty-two--‘twas the
same year our Jim was born and he’d have been twenty-two if he’d lived,
poor little fellow. Well, Master, twenty-two years ago a couple of
Italian pack peddlers came along and called at the Gordon place. The
country was swarming with them then. I useter set the dog on one every
day on an average.
“Well, these peddlers were man and wife, and the woman took sick up
there at the Gordon place, and Janet Gordon took her in and nursed her.
A baby was born the next day, and the woman died. Then the first thing
anybody knew the father skipped clean out, pack and all, and was never
seen or heard tell of afterwards. The Gordons were left with the fine
youngster to their hands. Folks advised them to send him to the Orphan
Asylum, and ‘twould have been the wisest plan, but the Gordons were
never fond of taking advice. Old James Gordon was living then, Thomas
and Janet’s father, and he said he would never turn a child out of his
door. He was a masterful old man and liked to be boss. Folks used to say
he had a grudge against the sun ‘cause it rose and set without his
say so. Anyhow, they kept the baby. They called him Neil and had him
baptized same as any Christian child. He’s always lived there. They
did well enough by him. He was sent to school and taken to church and
treated like one of themselves. Some folks think they made too much of
him. It doesn’t always do with that kind, for ‘what’s bred in bone
is mighty apt to come out in flesh,’ if ‘taint kept down pretty well.
Neil’s smart and a great worker, they tell me. But folks hereabouts
don’t like him. They say he ain’t to be trusted further’n you can see
him, if as far. It’s certain he’s awful hot tempered, and one time when
he was going to school he near about killed a boy he’d took a spite
to--choked him till he was black in the face and Neil had to be dragged
off.”
“Well now, father, you know they teased him terrible,” protested Mrs.
Williamson. “The poor boy had a real hard time when he went to school,
Master. The other children were always casting things up to him and
calling him names.”
“Oh, I daresay they tormented him a lot,” admitted her husband. “He’s
a great hand at the fiddle and likes company. He goes to the harbour a
good deal. But they say he takes sulky spells when he hasn’t a word
to throw to a dog. ‘Twouldn’t be any wonder, living with the Gordons.
They’re all as queer as Dick’s hat-band.”
“Father, you shouldn’t talk so about your neighbours,” said his wife
rebukingly.
“Well now, Mother, you know they are, if you’d only speak up honest. But
you’re like old Aunt Nancy Scott, you never say anything uncharitable
except in the way of business. You know the Gordons ain’t like other
people and never were and never will be. They’re about the only queer
folks we have in Lindsay, Master, except old Peter Cook, who keeps
twenty-five cats. Lord, Master, think of it! What chanct would a poor
mouse have? None of the rest of us are queer, leastwise, we hain’t found
it out if we are. But, then, we’re mighty uninteresting, I’m bound to
admit that.”
“Where do the Gordons live?” asked Eric, who had grown used to holding
fast to a given point of inquiry through all the bewildering mazes of
old Robert’s conversation.
“Away up yander, half a mile in from Radnor road, with a thick spruce
wood atween them and all the rest of the world. They never go away
anywheres, except to church--they never miss that--and nobody goes
there. There’s just old Thomas, and his sister Janet, and a niece of
theirs, and this here Neil we’ve been talking about. They’re a queer,
dour, cranky lot, and I WILL say it, Mother. There, give your old man a
cup of tea and never mind the way his tongue runs on. Speaking of tea,
do you know Mrs. Adam Palmer and Mrs. Jim Martin took tea together at
Foster Reid’s last Wednesday afternoon?”
“No, why, I thought they were on bad terms,” said Mrs. Williamson,
betraying a little feminine curiosity.
“So they are, so they are. But they both happened to visit Mrs. Foster
the same afternoon and neither would leave because that would be
knuckling down to the other. So they stuck it out, on opposite sides
of the parlour. Mrs. Foster says she never spent such an uncomfortable
afternoon in all her life before. She would talk a spell to one and then
t’other. And they kept talking TO Mrs. Foster and AT each other. Mrs.
Foster says she really thought she’d have to keep them all night, for
neither would start to go home afore the other. Finally Jim Martin came
in to look for his wife, ‘cause he thought she must have got stuck
in the marsh, and that solved the problem. Master, you ain’t eating
anything. Don’t mind my stopping; I was at it half an hour afore you
come, and anyway I’m in a hurry. My hired boy went home to-day. He heard
the rooster crow at twelve last night and he’s gone home to see which of
his family is dead. He knows one of ‘em is. He heard a rooster crow in
the middle of the night onct afore and the next day he got word that his
second cousin down at Souris was dead. Mother, if the Master don’t want
any more tea, ain’t there some cream for Timothy?”