memory isn't what it once was, you know."
But the squire was inclined to resent the idea that he could have
forgotten a matter of such importance, and though Mrs Jacob assured him
that his son had gone away for the day to Fosbrooke, it was all that his
daughter could do to prevent him from going in search of him. She
almost regretted not permitting him to go, however, for he would not
leave the subject, and insisted on Mrs Jacob telling him all about the
matter. She, with less sense and more malice than Elizabeth could have
supposed possible, went on to tell of what was to be done, and went over
the old grievance as to Mr Fleming's obstinacy in refusing to come to
terms for a piece of land which was the best for the mill-site, and good
for very little else, "just to spite Jacob."
"We won't talk about that," said the squire, seeming to forget the first
cause of grievance. "Jacob knows my mind about that matter. And it is
doubtful whether the company they talk about will ever amount to much--
at least for a time."
"Well, it isn't for me to say. But I must go. They'll think at home
that I am lost," and as she rose and pushed away her chair, she added in
a voice that the squire could not hear, "It is not for me to say much
about it. But Jacob generally does get things fixed pretty much to his
mind, and I guess he sees his way clear to get this as well. Of course
it will be just as much for Mr Fleming's benefit as for the rest of the
town, and his land will be paid for, he needn't fear that."
At the first mention of her grandfather's name, Katie had risen, and she
was standing with burning cheeks and shining eyes when Mrs Jacob turned
toward her to say good-bye.
"I hope you'll come and make me a visit before you go home. If Lizzie
can spare you I shall be pleased to have you come any day--say
to-morrow. Will you come?"
"No," said Katie, and then she sat down and put her book to her face
lest Mrs Jacob should see the angry tears which she feared would not be
kept back. For once in her life Mrs Jacob looked uncomfortable and
disconcerted in Elizabeth's presence. Elizabeth uttered not one of the
many angry words that had almost risen to her lips, but opened the door
and closed it again with only the usual words of good-bye.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
THE MINISTER'S FRIENDSHIP.
When Mr Maxwell left Squire Holt's house that first night of Katie's
visit to Miss Elizabeth, he did not return directly to the parsonage.
He stood a moment at the gate considering which direction it would be
wisest for him to take for the long walk which he felt he must have
before he slept. For the minister to be seen walking at that hour of
the night to no particular place, and for no particular purpose, would
give matter for discussion among some of those who specially interested
themselves in his comings and goings, and though the interest might be
flattering, the discussion was to be avoided.
So he hastened up the street in the direction of Jacob Holt's, and
turning into the field to the right, he took the path made as a short
cut by such of the North Gore boys as were this winter attending the
High-School. He would not be likely to meet any one there, nor on the
North Gore road, to which it led, certainly not in the field-path. The
snow had fallen heavily during the first part of the day, and now the
wind had risen, and when he came higher up the hill, it was with
difficulty that he got through the drifts that were growing deeper with
every blast. He soon lost the path, indeed every trace of it had long
disappeared, and if it had not been, that the broken line of the woods
which skirted the field on the other side of the hill was visible even
in the darkness, he might have lost himself altogether in his
wanderings.
As it was he made a long journey of the fields that lay between the two
highways, and when he reached the North Gore road he found he had had
enough of it; and a little breathless, but glowing with the pleasant
warmth which the exercise had excited, and a good deal more cheerful in
spirits than when he left Squire Holt's gate, he turned toward home.
His buffet with the wind and the great drifts had done him good. He
would doubtless have a sounder sleep and a brighter waking because of
it.
But something had to be done before he slept, and for this, too, it is
possible that the buffet with the snow and the wind was a preparation.
That something had happened to disturb the friendly relations in which
he had from the first stood with regard to Miss Elizabeth he had long
felt, and he had never felt it more painfully than to-night. He could
scarcely make clear to himself the nature of the change that had come to
their intercourse, and he did not know the reason of it--or he had
hitherto told himself that he did not. There was nothing in his life,
nor in his plans and prospects, that had not been there before the
friendliness of Miss Holt had been given him. There was nothing to
which he looked forward in the future which could interfere to make her
friendship less precious to him--nothing which could be a sufficient
reason for its withdrawal on her part--nothing which could compensate
him for its loss.
And yet it was slipping from him, or rather that which had made it
pleasant to him as no other friendship had ever been, and useful as no
other friendship in Gershom could ever be, was missed by him, to his
great loss and discomfort. Miss Holt was kind and frank and friendly
still. He would have used those very words--indeed he had used them--in
describing their relations to each other soon after their first
acquaintance, but there was a difference which, though it did not touch
the kindness and the friendliness, made itself felt still.
Was the change in Miss Holt or in himself? or was it caused by
circumstances which neither of them could help? This was the point
which Mr Maxwell proposed to settle that night before he slept. He
must see this clearly, he said to himself, and then he might also see a
way to prevent the pain and loss which estrangement from his friend must
cause.
It would be useless to follow him through all the troubled thoughts and
anxious questionings of the night. Out of them all came first a doubt,
and then a certainty, painful and not unmixed with shame, that the
friendship he feared to lose was more to him than was the love that put
it in jeopardy. Nay, that he had for many a month been mistaking love
for friendship, and friendship for love.
There were more troubled thoughts and anxious questionings, and they
ended in the conviction that he had made a great mistake for which there
seemed no remedy. He must suffer, but he knew that with God's help he
would overcome. For a time he must submit to the loss of that society
which had been so much to him since he came to Gershom. By and by, when
he should be wiser and stronger, and when other changes should have come
into his life, as they must come, his friendship with Miss Holt might be
renewed and strengthened, and through all his thoughts and questionings
it never came into his mind that the suffering might not be his alone.
About three months before this time, when Mr Maxwell had been a
resident of Gershom for a year and a half, circumstances occurred which
made it advisable for him to pay a visit to the place which had been his
home during the last years of his mother's life, and during the years
which followed her death while his course of study continued. It was a
visit which he anticipated with lively pleasure, and much enjoyed. His
home while there was, of course, in the house of his friend and his
mother's friend, Miss Martha Langden; and visiting her aunt at the same
time, as had frequently happened in former years when he had been this
lady's guest, was her niece, Miss Essie. She was a very pretty girl,
and a good girl as well, eight or ten years younger than Mr Maxwell,
but not too young to be his wife, his mother and her aunt had decided
long ago when Miss Essie was a child. These loving and rather romantic
friends had set their hearts on a union in every way to their view so
suitable, and they had been at less pains than was quite prudent to keep
their hopes and their plans to themselves. Indeed, as presented by a
fond mother to a studious and utterly inexperienced lad, such as young
Maxwell was at twenty, the prospect of a wife so pretty and winning and
well dowered could not but be agreeable enough, and though no formal
engagement was entered into between them, they had corresponded
frequently, and to an engagement it was taken for granted by all parties
this correspondence was to lead when the right time came.
The idea that the time of this visit might be the right time had not
presented itself so clearly to Mr Maxwell as it had to his friend Miss
Martha. Still it was natural enough and pleasant enough for him to fall
into the old relations with the pretty and good Miss Essie. Not quite
the old relations, however, for Miss Essie was a child no longer, but
eighteen years of age, and a graduate of one of the most popular ladies'
seminaries of the State, and quite inclined to stand on her dignity and
claim due consideration for her years and acquirements. She had been
one of the model young ladies of the seminary, it seemed, and in various
pretty ways, and with words sufficiently modest, she sought to make her
admiring friends aware of the fact, and dwelt with untiring interest on
the trials and triumphs of the time. But she by no means considered her
education completed, she gravely assured Mr Maxwell. She had a plan of
study drawn out by the distinguished principal of the seminary, which,
after she should be quite rested from the work of the last years, she
intended steadily to pursue, to the further development of her powers,
and the acquisition of knowledge which should fit her for usefulness in
any sphere which she might be called to occupy. She had much to say on
these themes, her present self-improvement and her future work and
influence in the world, and Mr Maxwell sometimes smiled in secret as he
listened, but he liked to listen all the same. Her views were not very
clear to herself, nor very practical, but she was very earnest in
expressing them; and being perfectly sincere in her beliefs and honest
in her intentions, she had also perfect confidence in the success of
what she was pleased to call her "life's work," and never doubted that
she should accomplish through her labours find see with her eyes, all
the good which she planned.
It was her earnestness and evident sincerity that charmed Mr Maxwell,
and though all this looked to him sometimes like a child's mimic
assumption of responsibilities and duties, with a child's power of
imagining what is desired, and ignoring all else, yet he was more
impatient of his own doubts than of her illusions.
But dare he speak or think of them as illusions? He recalled his own
early youth--the plans he had formed, the hopes he had cherished of all
he was to dare and do for his Master's sake, the battles he was to win,
the souls he was to conquer, and he grew grave and self-reproachful at
the remembrance. He was young yet as to his work and his office, and
young in years, but in the presence of all his earnestness, this desire
to do good and true work in the world, he could not but acknowledge that
his own early zeal had cooled somewhat, that something had gone from him
in life, and in his discontent with himself his admiration for the
little enthusiast grew apace. And though he could not but smile now and
then, still as she made her modest little allusions to her private diary
and to certain "resolutions" written therein, and though he could not
always respond with sufficient heartiness to satisfy himself when she
showed him little letters on very thin paper that had come to her from
"distant lands," and confessed to anxious thoughts as to the claims
which the "foreign field" and the "dark places of the earth" might have
upon her, yet listening to her, and meeting Aunt Martha's admiring
glances, and hearing her more extended accounts of her self-devotion and
self-denial, he could not but consider himself fortunate in his
relations to them both, and desire almost as earnestly as Aunt Martha
did that the young girl should consent to share his life's work and make
it hers. To this end all their intercourse tended, and the course of
love, in their case, promised to be as smooth as could be desired for a
time.
But an interruption occurred as the end of Mr Maxwell's visit drew
near, which, however, seemed hardly to be an interruption as they took
it, or rather, it should be said, as the young lady whom it was
specially designed to influence seemed to take it.
Up to this time Miss Martha had been permitted to do very much as she
chose with her pretty niece. Miss Essie's mother, a dear friend of Miss
Martha's, had died when her daughter was an infant, and the child's
home, even after the second marriage of her father, had been almost as
often with her aunt as with him. Her aunt had chosen her teachers and
her schools, and had introduced her to a social circle far more refined
and intellectual than she could have found in the large manufacturing
town where her father lived. She had formed the girl's mind, and
possessed her affections, and had come to look upon her as her own child
rather than as the child of her hitherto somewhat indifferent father,
who had another family growing up around him. It certainly never came
into Miss Martha's mind that the future she had been planning for her
darling might be regarded by the father with unfavourable eyes. So that
his decided refusal to permit his daughter to enter into an engagement
of marriage with the young man was a surprise as well as a pain to her.
The father was not unreasonable in his objections. Mr Maxwell might be
all that his partial old friend declared him to be, worthy in all
respects of his daughter. But that a child--he called her a child--
should ignorantly make a blind promise that must affect her whole future
life, he would not allow. A girl just out of school, who had seen
nothing of the world, who could not possibly know her own mind on any
matter of importance, must not be suffered to do herself this wrong. He
smiled a little when Aunt Martha, hoping to move him, dwelt earnestly on
her dear Essie's views of life, her plans of usefulness, and her desire
above all things to do some good in the world. It was all right, he
said, just what he should expect from a girl brought up by a good woman
like Aunt Martha. But all the same she was only a child, and she could
not know whether she cared enough for Mr Maxwell to be happy in doing
her life's work in his company.
Even when Miss Martha in her eagerness betrayed how long the thought of
her niece's engagement had been familiar to her, he only laughed, though
he saw that he had a good right to be angry, and he stood firm to his
first determination that for two years at least there should be no
engagement. Essie must have more experience of life; she must visit her
mother's relations, and see more of the world. He intended she should
spend the next winter with her aunt in New York, and he would not have
her hampered by any engagement, out of which, if she should find that
she had mistaken her own heart, trouble might spring. He was firm, and
poor Miss Martha was heart-broken at the turn which affairs had taken.
Not so her niece. She had no words with her father with regard to the
matter, but she gave her aunt to understand that she considered a mere
formal engagement a matter of little consequence where true and loving
hearts were concerned. She must not disobey her father, but time would
show that he had been mistaken and not she.
"And after all, auntie, a year, or even two, does not make so much
difference, and I rather like the idea of spending the winter with Aunt
Esther in New York."
Aunt Martha sighed. She did not like the idea at all. She would miss
her darling, and she had no great confidence in her Aunt Esther, and she
dreaded some of the influences to which the child must be exposed, for
she was little more than a child, Aunt Martha acknowledged, a wise and
good child indeed, but one never could know what might come in the
course of two years to change her views of life. And altogether, the
dear old lady was not so hopeful as she felt she ought to be, knowing as
she so well did, that our days and our ways are all ordered by a higher
wisdom than our own.
Miss Essie was not downhearted; on the contrary, her sweetness and
resignation in the presence of her aunt's sorrow and anxiety were
beautiful to see. She acknowledged with a readiness that pleased her
father greatly, that he was quite right in thinking her too young and
inexperienced to take the decision of so serious a matter into her own
hands; and when she added that the years which might be supposed to
bring wisdom as well as experience would find her unchanged as to the
purpose of her life, he only smiled and nodded his head a good many
times, and let it pass.
Mr Maxwell may be said to have been resigned and hopeful also. Indeed
he had not expected to take the young lady to Gershom for a good while
to come. He acknowledged that Mr Langden's view of the case was just
and reasonable, and looking at it from a Gershom point of view, he
acknowledged to himself, though he did not think it necessary to say
anything of it to any one else, that a few more years and a wider
experience would be of advantage to a minister's wife in relation to
even the comparatively primitive community where his lot was cast. So
he went away cheerfully enough, content to wait.
It must be confessed that Miss Martha was the greatest sufferer of the
three at this time. She too was obliged to allow that her niece was
very young, and she did not doubt that the years would add to her many
gifts and graces. Nor did she doubt her constancy, or she believed she
did not, but she knew that a change had come to the means and
circumstances of her brother of late. He had always been a prosperous
man in a safe and quiet way, but of late he had become a rich man, and
though no decided change had as yet been made in the manner of life of
his family, she knew by various signs and tokens that Miss Essie at
least was to have the benefit of those advantages which wealth can give.
And though she told herself that she did not doubt that she would be
brought safely through the temptations to which wealth might expose her,
she sometimes thought of her picture with a troubled heart.
A short absence was just what Mr Maxwell had needed to prove to himself
how content he was to look upon Gershom as his home, and upon his church
and congregation and upon the people of the place generally, as his
friends. His visit had been so arranged as to include the New England
Thanksgiving Day, which falls in the end of November, and the winter,
which set in early this year, was beginning when he returned. Winter is
the time of leisure in Canada among farmers, and in country places
generally, for the long winter evenings give opportunity for doing many
things never undertaken at other seasons. So Gershom folks were busy
with special arrangements of one sort and another for pleasure and
profit, and Mr Maxwell made himself busy with the rest. Winter was the
time for special courses of lectures and sermons, for social gatherings
among the people of the congregation, and for a good deal more of
regular pastoral visiting than was ever undertaken by him at other
seasons, and it was with satisfaction, even with thankfulness, that he
found himself looking forward without dread to his work.
A quiet and busy winter lay before him. Of course there must be the
usual anxieties and vexations, he thought; and he also thought that he
would have the kindly counsel and sympathy of Miss Elizabeth. But after
his first visit to the squire's house a difference made itself apparent
in their intercourse. It was not that Miss Holt was less friendly or
less ready with counsel or encouragement when it was needed. But there
was something wanting, and what this might be he set himself to consider
on that night after his walk in the snowy fields.
He did not discover it, but he discovered something else which startled
him--something which could neither be helped nor hindered--something
which could only be borne silently and patiently. Through time and a
loyal devotion to the work which his Master had given him to do, the
pain should wear away.
In one of the long letters which Mr Maxwell received about this time
from Miss Langden, there came, to his surprise and momentary
discomfiture, a little note to Miss Holt. He knew that Miss Essie was
very fond of writing little notes to her friends and also to the friends
of her friends, and when he came to think about it, the only wonder was
that she had not written to Miss Holt before.
For, of course, he had spoken to her of Miss Elizabeth, as he had spoken
of others who were his special friends among his parishioners. Miss
Martha had been set right as to her age and her place in the world of
Gershom, and he had answered many questions with regard to her. He had
answered questions about other people too--about John McNider, and the
Flemings and Miss Betsey, and there might come a little letter to one of
them some day. He laughed when he thought of this, but he did not laugh
when he thought of giving the note to Miss Elizabeth.
He need not have been troubled. It was a very innocent little letter,
which Miss Elizabeth received without any expression of surprise and
read in his presence.
"It is not the first letter I have received from Miss Essie Langden. I
heard from her while you were still away."
Miss Elizabeth's colour changed a little as she said this.
"She did not tell me," said Mr Maxwell.
"I was glad she wrote to me," said Miss Elizabeth.
There had not been much in the first letter, either. Miss Essie had
thanked Miss Holt for her goodness to her friend "Will Maxwell," as she
called him. Then there was something about knowing and loving each
other at some future time, and something more about a common work and a
common purpose in life, and something about "the tie that binds," and
that was all.
It might mean much or little according as it was read, and to Elizabeth
it had meant much. It did not find her altogether untroubled. She had
missed Mr Maxwell more than she had supposed possible, and had been
obliged to confess to herself that the winter in Gershom would be a very
different matter if he were not to be there. But then it would be a
different matter to all the rest of the people, as well as to her, and
so she had quieted herself till Miss Essie's letter came. It startled
her, but the pain it gave her made her glad of its coming. She was
frank with herself, or she meant to be so. She had been receiving and
enjoying more from Mr Maxwell's friendship than could possibly be hers
as time went on and circumstances changed, and then she might miss it
more than would be reasonable or pleasant. So she was very glad that
the letter had been written and awaited Mr Maxwell's return, expecting
to hear more, and preparing herself to be sympathetic and
congratulatory.
But she had heard no more, and she could not but be surprised. For
though he might not for various reasons be ready to make known his
engagement to all Gershom, she thought he owed it to their friendship to
acknowledge it to her.
"I have been longing to congratulate you, Mr Maxwell--though you have
told me nothing," said she as she folded the note and laid it down.
"I have nothing to tell that would call for congratulation--in the way
you mean," said the minister. "But I would like to talk a little to
you, Miss Elizabeth, if you will be so kind as to listen to me."
It was growing dark, and there was only the firelight in the room, and
taking her knitting in her hands, Miss Elizabeth sat down to listen. He
made rather a long story of it, telling of the friendship between his
mother and Miss Essie's aunt--of their hopes and plans for them, of
their correspondence, and lastly of Mr Langden's interference as to a
positive engagement because of his daughter's youth. Of course there
was no chance for congratulation, he said.
But Miss Elizabeth had hopes to express and good wishes, and one good
thing came out of their talk: the coldness or distance, or whatever it
might be called, that had come between the friends for a while, seemed
to pass away, and they fell into their old ways again.