laughed too, and hung his head, remembering Mrs Jacob's dainties, which
he had not yet been able to do justice to. Mrs Fleming might have
enlarged on the subject if time allowed, but they had a long walk before
them.
"I hope you'll no be such a stranger now that you have found your way
back again," said Mrs Fleming, as Elizabeth was putting on her shawl.
"I mind the old days, and you have ay been kind to my Katie, who is
growing a woman now, and more in need of kindness and counsel than
ever," added she, looking wistfully from the one to the other. For
answer, Elizabeth turned and kissed Katie, and then touched with her
lips the brown wrinkled hand of the grandmother.
"God bless you and keep you, and give you the desire of your heart,"
said Mrs Fleming, "if it be the best thing for you," she added, moved
by a prudent after-thought, which came to her to-night more quickly than
such thoughts were apt to come to her. "I'm no feared for you or Katie.
Why should I be? You are both in good keeping. And if you are no
dealt with to your pleasure, you will be to your profit, and that is the
chief thing."
They had a pleasant walk through the dewy fields in the moonlight, and
much to say to one another, but they had fallen into silence before they
paused at the gate to say "good-night."
"I suppose on the whole our visit may be considered a success," said
Clifton as they lingered.
"Altogether a success," said Elizabeth.
"I am glad I went in your company," said the minister.
"Thank you," said Elizabeth.
"Your are welcome," said her brother, and then he added, laughing, "I
hope all the rest of the world will be as well pleased."
This was to be doubted. Mrs Jacob was by no means pleased for one.
She had said nothing to Elizabeth on the occasion when Mr Maxwell had
stayed away from the sewing-circle, but Elizabeth knew that her silence
did not imply either forgetfulness or forgiveness. She could wait long
for an opportunity to speak, and could then put much into a few words
for the hearing of the offender. It was a renewal of the offence that
the minister should have been taken to the hill-farm by Clifton, and
then to Ythan Brae by him and his sister, though why she could not have
easily explained. Whatever Clifton did was apt to take the form of an
indiscretion in her eyes, but neither her sharp words nor her soft words
were heeded by him, and she rarely wasted them upon him. But it was
different where his sister was concerned. She had turns now and then of
taking upon herself the responsibility of Elizabeth, as of a young girl
to whom she stood as the nearest female relation, and she knew how to
hurt her when she tried. Elizabeth rarely resented openly her little
thrusts, but all the same, she unconsciously armed herself for defence
in Mrs Jacob's presence, and an attitude of defence is always
uncomfortable where relations who meet often are concerned.
They had met a good many times, however, before any allusion was made to
the visits which had displeased her. She came one day into Elizabeth's
sitting-room to find Mr Maxwell there in animated discussion with
Clifton. She hardly recognised him in the new brightness of his face,
and the animation of his voice and manner. He was as unlike as possible
to the silent, constrained young man who daily sat at her table, and who
responded so inadequately to her efforts for his entertainment. She
liked the minister, and wished to make him happy in her house, and there
was real pain mingled with the unreasonable anger she felt as she
watched him. Her first few minutes were occupied in answering the old
squire's questions about Jacob and the children. She had startled him
from his afternoon's sleep, and he was a little querulous and exacting,
as was usual at such times. But in a little she said:
"Mr Maxwell had good visits at the Hill, and at Mr Fleming's, he told
us. It is a good thing you thought of going with him, Elizabeth. You
and Cousin Betsey have become reconciled."
"Reconciled!" repeated Elizabeth; "we have never quarrelled."
"Oh, of course not. That would not do at all. But you have never been
very fond of one another, you know."
"I respect Cousin Betsey entirely, though we do not often see one
another," said Elizabeth. "I did not go to the Hill the other day,
however. Clifton went with Mr Maxwell, and they enjoyed it, as you
say."
The squire was a little deaf, and not catching what was said, needed to
have the whole matter explained to him.
"Betsey is a good woman," said he; "I respect Betsey. Her mother isn't
much of a business woman, and it is well Betsey is spared to her. It'll
be all right about the place; I'll make it all right, and Jacob won't be
hard on them."
And so the old man rambled on, till the talk turned to other matters,
and Mrs Jacob kept the rest of her remarks for Elizabeth's private ear.
"I am so glad you like Mr Maxwell, Elizabeth. I was afraid you would
not; you are so fastidious, you know, and he seems to have so little to
say for himself."
"I like him very much, and so does Clifton," said Elizabeth, waiting for
more.
"I am very glad. He seems to be having a good influence on Clifton. He
hasn't been in any trouble this time, at all, has he? How thankful you
must be. Jacob is pleased. I only hope it may last."
The discussion of her younger brother's delinquencies, real or supposed,
was almost the only thing that irritated Elizabeth beyond her power of
concealment; and if she had been in her sister-in-law's house, this
would have been the moment when she would have drawn her visit to a
close. Now she could only keep silence.
"I hope Clifton may do well next year," went on Mrs Jacob; "you will
miss him, and so shall we."
"We must do as well as we can without him. In summer he will be home
for good, I hope."
"Yes, if he should conclude to settle down steadily to business. Time
will show, and this winter we have Mr Maxwell. It depends some on Miss
Martha Langden, I suppose, how long we shall have him in our house. You
have heard all about that, I suppose?" said she, smiling significantly.
Elizabeth smiled too, but shook her head.
"I have heard the name," said she.
"Well, you must not ask me about her. I only know that she gets a good
many letters from Gershom about this time. It is not to be spoken of
yet."
She rose to go, and Elizabeth went with her to the door, and she laughed
to herself as she followed her with her eye down the street. She had
heard Miss Martha Langden's name once. It was on the night when Mr
Maxwell called on his way from the Hill-farm. He had said that he liked
Miss Betsey, and that she reminded him of one of his best friends, Miss
Martha Langden, one who had been his mother's friend when he was a
child.
Miss Elizabeth laughed again as she turned to go into the house, and she
might have laughed all the same, if she had known that the frequent
letters to Miss Martha Langden never went without a little note to some
one very different from Miss Martha. But she did not know this till
long after.
Clifton Holt went back to college again, and Elizabeth prepared for a
quiet winter. She knew that, as in other winters, she would be held
responsible for a certain amount of entertainment to the young people of
the village in the way of gigantic sewing-circles, and no less gigantic
evening parties. But these could not fall often to her turn, and they
were not exciting affairs, even when the whole responsibility of them
fell on herself, as was the case when her brother was away. So it was a
very quiet winter to which she looked forward.
And because she did not dread the utter quiet, as she had done in former
winters, and because she was able to dismiss from her thoughts, with
very little consideration of the matter, a tempting invitation to pass a
month or two in the city of Montreal, she fancied she was drawing near
to that period in a woman's life, when she is supposed to be becoming
content with the existing order of things, when the dreams and hopes,
and expectations vague and sweet, which make so large a part in girlish
happiness, give place to graver and more earnest thoughts of life and
duty, to a juster estimate of what life has to give, and an acquiescent
acceptance of the lot which she has not chosen, but which has come to
her in it. It is not very often that so desirable a state of mind and
heart comes to girls of four-and-twenty. It certainly had not come to
Elizabeth. However, it gave her pleasure--and a little pain as well--to
think so, and it was a good while before she found out that she had made
a mistake.
As for Mr Maxwell, he was "coming to himself," as Mrs Fleming had
predicted. His health improved, and as he grew familiar with his new
circumstances, the despondency that had weighed him down was dispelled.
Before the snow came, he was making visits among the people, without any
one to keep him in countenance. Not regular pastoral visits, but quite
informal ones, to the farmer in his pasture or wood-lot, or as he
followed his oxen over the autumn fields. He dropped now and then into
the workshop of Samuel Green, the carpenter, and exchanged a word with
John McNider as he passed his forge, where he afterward often stopped to
have a talk. The first theological discussion he had in Gershom was
held in Peter Longley's shoe-shop, one morning when he found that
amiable sceptic alone and disposed--as he generally was--for a
declaration of his rather peculiar views of doctrine and practice; and
his first temperance lecture was given to an audience of one, as he
drove in Mark Varney's ox-cart over that poor man's dreary and neglected
fields.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
MINISTER AND PEOPLE.
In Gershom in these primitive days, a deep interest in the affairs of
their neighbours, private, personal and relative, and a full and free
discussion of the same, implied to the minds of people in general no
violation of any law of morals or expediency. It was a part of the
established order of things, which had its advantages and disadvantages.
Almost everybody had a measure of enjoyment in it, and everybody had to
submit to it.
Even those among the people who would have found little to interest them
in the comings and goings of their neighbours generally, took part in
the admiring discussion of the comings and goings of the minister.
There was a comfortable sense of duty about the matter, a feeling that
they were manifesting an interest in "the cause," and "holding up the
minister's hands" on such occasions that was agreeable. There was a
sense of satisfaction in the frequent allusions made to the Sunday's
sermon, in the repetition of the text and "heads," and in the admiring
remarks and comparisons which usually accompanied this, as if it were
religious conversation that was being carried on and enjoyed. The
pleasing delusion extended to the old people's endless talks about
subscription-lists, and ways and means of support and to the young
people's plans and preparations for a great fair to be held for the
purpose of obtaining funds for the future furnishing and adorning of the
parsonage. So it was a happy era in the history of the congregation and
the village. Everybody was interested, almost everybody was pleased.
If Mr Maxwell had heard half the kind and admiring things that were
said of him, or if he had known a tenth part of what he was expected to
accomplish by his sermons, his example, his influence, he would have
been filled with confusion and dismay. But happily "a wholesome
silence" with regard to these things was at first for the most part
preserved toward him, and he took his way among his people unembarrassed
by any over-anxious effort to meet expectations too highly raised.
To tell the truth, he was getting a good deal more credit than he
deserved just at this time. His devotion to his work, his labours "in
season and out of season," his zeal and energy, and kindness in the way
of visiting and becoming acquainted with the people, were due less to a
conscious desire to do them good, or to serve his Master, than to a
growing pleasure in friendly contact with his fellow-creatures. He was
entering on a new and wonderful branch of study, the study of living
men, and he entered upon it with earnestness and delight.
Hitherto his most intimate acquaintance had been with men, the greater
number of whom had been dead for hundreds of years. His living friends
had, for the most part, been men of one type, men of more or less
intelligence, educated on the same plan, holding the same opinions--men
of whose views on most subjects he might have been sure without a word
from them. His intercourse with the greater number of them had been
formal and conventional; upon very few had he ever had any special claim
for sympathy or interest.
All this was different now. The interest of the Gershom people was real
and evident, and he had a right to it; and he owed to them, for his
Master's sake, both love and service. They were real men he had to deal
with, not mere embodiments of certain views and opinions. They were men
with feelings and prejudices; they were men who, like himself, sinned
and suffered, and were afraid. They had opinions also, on most
subjects, firmly held and decidedly expressed. Indeed, some of them had
a way of putting things which was a positive refreshment and stimulus to
him. It had, for the moment, the effect of genius and originality, and
in the first pleasure of contact, he was inclined to give to some of his
new friends a higher place intellectually than he gave them afterward.
Happily, he kept his opinions of men and things very much to himself in
these first days, and scandalised no one by declaring Peter Longley to
be a genius, or John McNider to be a hero, or by taking the part of poor
Mark Varney, as one more sinned against than sinning.
He owed his reputation for wisdom in these first months quite as much to
his silence as to his speech. His own superficial knowledge of men and
things got easily from books, seemed to him--as indeed it was--a poor
thing in comparison with the wisdom which some of these quiet,
unpretending men had almost unconsciously been gathering through the
experience of years. But it did not seem so to them. When he did
speak, he could, through the discipline of education and training, put
into clear right words the thoughts which they found it not easy to
utter, and they gave him credit for the thought as his, when often he
was only giving back to them what he had received. And he listened
well, and he chose his subjects judiciously when he did talk. It was
iron with the blacksmith, and wood with the carpenter, and seeds and
soils and the rotation of crops with the farmer, and without at all
meaning to exalt himself thereby, he would put the reading of some
leisure hour into a few well-chosen words, which seemed like treasures
of wisdom to men who had gathered their knowledge by the slow process of
hearsay and observation; and what with one thing, and what with another,
the minister grew in favour with them all.
That there had ever been a latent sense of disappointment in the minds
of any great number of the people on his first appearance among them
would have been indignantly denied. Possibly, in the varied course of
events, some in the parish might have their eyes opened to see failings
and faults in him, but in the meantime there existed in the congregation
a wonderful unanimity of feeling with regard to him.
"The cause was prospering in their midst," that was the usual formula by
which was expressed the satisfaction of the staid and elderly people
among them. It meant different things to different people: that the
church was well filled; that the weekly meetings were well attended;
that the subscription-list looked well; that the North Gore folks were
drawing in generally, and identifying themselves with the congregation.
This last sign of prosperity was the one most generally seen and
rejoiced over. There had all along been a difference of opinion among
the wise men of the church as to the manner in which the desired union
was to be brought about. The bolder spirits, and the new-comers, who
did not remember the well-meant, but futile attempts of Mr Hollister
and Deacon Turner in that direction, were of opinion that formal
prospects for union should be made to the North Gore men; that matters
of doctrine and discipline should be discussed either publicly or
privately as might be decided, and that in some way the outsiders should
be made to commit themselves to a general movement in the direction of
union. But the more prudent and easy-going of the flock saw
difficulties in the way. It was not impossible, the prudent people
said, that in the course of discussion new elements of disagreement
might manifest themselves, and that the committing might be to the wrong
side. The easy-going souls among them were of opinion that it was best
"just to let things kind o' happen along easy"--saying that after a
while the sensible people of the North Gore would "realise their
privileges" and avail themselves of the advantages which church
fellowship offered to true Christians, and all agreed, before a year
were over, that Mr Maxwell's influence and teaching would help to bring
about all that was so much desired.
And as time went on, one thing worked with another toward the desired
end. In the course of the winter, several of those who were looked upon
as leaders among the North Gore people, both for intelligence and piety,
cast in their lot with the village people by uniting formally with the
church. A good many more became constant hearers without doing so; some
hesitating for one reason, and some for another. Among these were the
Flemings, whose reason for keeping aloof was supposed to be Jacob Holt,
though no one had a right to speak by their authority, of the matter.
Of course Mr Maxwell had been made acquainted with the peculiar
circumstances of the place, and he rejoiced with the rest at such
evidences of success in his work as the gathering in of the North Gore
implied, but no one had ever told him of any serious difficulty existing
between old Mr Fleming and Jacob Holt. It was Squire Holt who first
spoke to him about it, and the winter was nearly over before that time.
The squire in one of his retrospective moods went over "the whole
story," speaking very kindly of the young lad who had gone astray, and
of his brother who had died. He spoke kindly, too, of the old man, with
whom he had always been on the most friendly terms, but he did not
hesitate to say that he thought him foolish and unreasonable in the
position he took toward Jacob.
"It was because of something that happened when his son Hugh went away,
but Jacob was no more to blame than others; and it might have been all
right if the foolish young man had only stayed at home and taken the
risk. I tried at the time to talk things over with the old man, but he
never would hear a word. There are folks in Gershom who think hard of
Jacob, because of old Mr Fleming's opinion, though they did not know a
word about the matter. And I'm afraid it's going to do mischief in the
church."
"It is strange that I should never have heard of all this before," said
Mr Maxwell, at a loss to decide how much of the regret and anxiety
evidently felt by Mr Holt was due to the weakness of age. "During all
my visits to Mr Fleming, and you know I saw him frequently during his
illness, not a word was ever spoken that could have reference to any
trouble between the two, nor has your son--"
Mr Maxwell paused. He was not so sure of the exact correctness of what
he had been about to say. A good many hints and remarks of Jacob, and
of his wife also, which had seemed vague at the time, and which he had
allowed to pass without remark, occurred to him now as possibly having
reference to this trouble.
"Probably there has been misunderstanding between them," said he after a
little.
"Just so," said the old man eagerly. "Jacob aint the man to be hard on
anybody--to say hard; he likes to have what is his own, and being a good
man of business he hates shiftless doings, and so shiftless folks think
and say hard things of him. But as to taking the advantage of an old
man like Mr Fleming--why, it would be about as mean a thing as a man
could do, and Jacob aint the man to do it, whatever may be said of him.
"Why, look here, Mr Maxwell. Just let me tell you all about it." And
the old man, with perfect fairness and sufficient clearness, went into
all particulars as to the state of Mr Fleming's affairs at the time of
his son's death, and of Jacob's claims upon him. His real respect and
friendship for the old man was evident in all he said, and when he
lamented that his old friend's unreasonableness should make a settlement
of his affairs so difficult, and should make unpleasant talk and hard
feelings in the community, Mr Maxwell could not but spare his regret.
"Why, look here, Mr Maxwell. There hasn't been a cent paid on the
principal yet, and not all the interest, though it is years ago now, and
some of that has been borrowed money. And there is little prospect of
its being any different for years to come. If it had been almost any
one else but Jacob, he'd have foreclosed long ago, and I don't know but
he had better when the right time comes."
It was on Mr Maxwell's lips to express assent to this, when a glance at
the face of Miss Elizabeth arrested his words. It wore a look which he
had sometimes seen on it when she wished to turn her father's thoughts
away from a subject which was becoming painful to him. There was
anxiety, even pain in her face as well, on this occasion, and these
deepened as her father went on.
"Only the other day Jacob was talking to me about it. `Father,' says
he, `why can't you just say a word to the old man about letting me have
a piece of his land on the river, and settle matters all up. He'll hear
you,' says he. `I don't want to make hard feelings in the church, or
anywhere else,' says he. `It's as much for the old man's interest to
have his affairs all straightened out, as it is for me, and more. There
need be no trouble about it, if he'd only listen to reason.' I expect I
shall have to have a talk with Mr Fleming about it some time," added
the old man gravely. "Or you might speak, Mr Maxwell. He would listen
to you."
"Only, father, it would be as well to wait till the old gentleman is
quite well and strong again," said Elizabeth, rising and folding up her
work, and moving about as if to prevent the chance of more talk.
"Well, I guess so, and then I don't suppose it would amount to much
anything I could say to him. I wouldn't like to say anything to vex or
worry him. He has had a deal of trouble one way and another, since he
came to the place, and it has kind of soured him, but he is always as
sweet as milk to me. You aren't going away, are you, Mr Maxwell?
There, I have tired you all out with my talk, and I've tired myself too.
But don't you hurry away. I'll go and step round a little to get the
fresh air, and then I'll lie down a spell, and rest. And, Lizzie, you
find `The Puritan' for Mr Maxwell, and he can take a look at that in
the meantime."
Elizabeth did as she was bidden, and managed to make the minister
understand, without saying so, that she would like him not to go away.
So he sat down to the doubtful enjoyment of the paper while Elizabeth
followed her father from the room.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
TAKING COUNSEL.
It was one of those soft, bright days of early March that might beguile
a new-comer to the country into a temporary belief that spring had come
at last, and Elizabeth, tying her "cloud" over her head, followed her
father out into the yard. To take a walk just for the sake of the walk
was not likely to suit old Mr Holt, or to do him much good. But he and
Elizabeth went about here and there, in the yard and up and down the
well-swept walk from the gate to the door, where the snow lay still on
either side as high as the squire's shoulder, and Elizabeth talked to
him about the great wood-pile, and praised the industry and energy of
Nathan Pell, the hired man, and of his team, Dick and Doll, that were
making it longer every day. She spoke of the great drifts that must be
cleared away before the thaw came, of the bough which last night's wind
had brought down from the elm in the corner, of the broken bit of fence
beyond the gate, of anything to lead his thoughts away from the theme
which for the last hour had occupied and excited him.