A Dozen Ways Of Love Part 4

That conversation happened when Eelan first came home; but a year or two after, the family conferences took a more serious tone. She had learnt to keep her father's books in the shop, and had become deft at housework; but there was no prospect of her settling in a house of her own; many of the best young men in the place had offered themselves as lovers and been refused.

'Oh! what's the use o' talking, father,' cried Mrs. Reid; 'if the girl won't, she won't, and that's all.--But I can tell _you_, Eelan Reid, that all your looks and your manners won't save you from being an old maid, if you turn your back on the men.'

'I wasn't talking,' said Mr. Reid humbly; 'I was only saying to the la.s.sie that I didn't want her to hurry; but I'd be right sorry when I'm getting old not to have some notion where I was going to leave my money--it'll more than last out Eelan's day, if it's rightly taken care of.'

'But I can't marry unless I should fall in love,' said Eelan wistfully.

Her parents had a vague notion that this manner of expressing herself was in some way a proof of her high accomplishments.

Life was by no means dull in the little town. There were picnics in summer, sleigh-drives in winter, dances, and what not; and Eelan was no recluse. Still, she loved the place better than the people, and there was not a spot of ground in the neighbourhood that she did not know by heart.

In summer, the sparkling water of the lake rippled under a burning sun, and the thousand tree-trunks left floating in it, held near to the edge by the floating boom of logs, became hot and dry on the upper side, while the green water-moss caught them from beneath. It was great fun for the school children to scamper out daringly on these floating fields of lumber; and Eelan liked to go with them, and sometimes walk far out alone along the edge of the boom. She would listen to the birds singing, the children shouting, to the whir of the saws in the mill, and the plash of the river falling over the dam; and she would feel that it was enough delight simply to live without distressing herself about marriage yet awhile.

When winter came, Eelan was happier still. All the roughness and darkness of the earth was lost in a downy ocean of snow. Where the waterfall had been there was a fairy palace of icicles glancing in the sun, and smooth white roads were made across the frozen lake. Eelan never drew back dazzled from the glittering landscape; she was a child of the winter, and she loved its light. She would often harness her father's horse to the old family sleigh and drive alone across the lake.

She took her snow-shoes with her, and, leaving the horse at some friendly farmhouse, she would tramp into the woods over the trackless snow. The girl would stand still and look up at the solemn pines and listen, awed by their majestic movement and the desolate loveliness all around. At such time, if the thought of marriage came, she did not put it aside with the light fancy that she wished still to remain free; she longed, in the drear solitude, for some one to sympathise with her, some one who could explain the meaning of the wordless thoughts that welled up within her, the vague response of her heart to the mystery of external beauty. Alas! among all her suitors there was not such a friend.

There was no one else in the town who cared for country walks as Eelan did--at least, no one but the schoolmaster. She met him occasionally, walking far from home; he was a quaint, old-looking man, and she thought he had a face like an angel's. She might have wished sometimes to stop and speak to him, but when they met he always appeared to have his eyes resting on the distant horizon, and his mind seemed wrapped in some learned reverie, to the oblivion of outward things. The schoolmaster lived in the schoolhouse on the bank of the curving river, a bit below the waterfall. He took up his abode there a few months before Eelan Reid came home from school. He had come from somewhere nearer the centres of education--had been imported, so to speak, for the special use of Haven Settlement, for the leading men of the place were a canny set and knew the worth of books. His testimonials had told of a higher standard of scholars.h.i.+p than was usual in such schools, and the keen Scots had snapped at the chance and engaged him without an interview; but when he arrived they had been grievously disappointed. He was a gentle, unsophisticated man, shy as a girl, and absent-minded withal.

'Aweel, I'll not say but he'll do to put sums and writing into the youngsters' heads and teach them to spout their poems; but he's not just what I call a _man_.' This was the opinion which Macpherson, the portly owner of the mill, had delivered to his friends.

'There's something lacking, I'm thinking,' said one; 'he's thirty-six years old, and to see him driving his cow afield, you'd say he was sixty, and him not sickly either.'

'I doubt he's getting far too high a salary,' said Macpherson solemnly.

'To pa.s.s examinations is all very well; but he's not got the grit in him that I'd like to see.'

So they had called a school committee meeting, and suggested to the new schoolmaster, as delicately as they could, that they were much disappointed with his general manner and appearance, but that, as he had come so far, they were graciously willing to keep him if he would consent to take a lower salary than that first agreed on. At this the schoolmaster grew very red, and, with much stammering, he managed to make a speech. He said that he liked the wildness and extreme beauty of the country, and the children appeared to him attractive; he did not wish to go away; and as to salary, he would take what they thought him worth.

In this way they closed the bargain with him on terms quite satisfactory to themselves.

'But hoots,' said the stout Macpherson as he ambled home from the meeting, 'I've only half a respect for a man that can't stand up for himself;' and this sentiment was more or less echoed by them all.

Happily, the schoolmaster did not desire society. The minister's wife asked him to tea occasionally; and he confided to her that, up to that time, he had always lived with his mother, and that it was because of her death that he had left his old home, where sad memories were too great a strain upon him, and come farther west. No one else took much notice of him, partly because he took no notice of them. At the ladies'

sewing meeting the doctor's wife looked round the room with an injured air and asked: 'How is it possible to ask a gentleman to tea when you know that he'll meet you in the street next morning and won't remember who you are?'

'A lady who respected herself couldn't do it,' replied Mrs. Reid positively; and then in an undertone she remarked to herself, 'The gaby!'

Miss Ann Blakely pursed her lips and craned her thin neck over her work.

'As to that I don't know, Mrs. Reid; no one could visit the school, as I have done, and fail to observe that the youth of the town are more obedient than formerly. In my opinion, a gentleman who can command the respect of the growing masculine mind----' She finished the sentence only by an expressive wave of her head.

'There is much truth in Miss Blakely's remark,' said a timid little mother of six sons.

People married early, as a general thing, in Haven Settlement, and Miss Blakely, having been accidentally overlooked, had, before he came, indulged in some soft imaginations of her own with regard to the new schoolmaster; like others, she was disappointed in him; but she had not yet decided 'whether,' to use her own phrase, 'he would not, after all, be better than none.' She poised this question in her mind with a nice balancing of reasons for and against for about three years, and the man who was thus the object of her interest continued to live peacefully, ignorant alike of hostile criticism and tender speculation.

It was a terrible day for the schoolmaster when the honest widow who lived with him as housekeeper was called by the death of a daughter-in-law to go and keep the house of her son in another town. She could only tell of her intention two weeks before it was necessary to leave; and very earnestly did the schoolmaster consult with her in the interval as to what he could possibly do to supply her place, for servants in Haven Settlement were rare luxuries.

'I don't know, I'm sure, sir, what you can do,' said Mrs. Sims hopelessly. 'The girls in these parts are far too proud to be hired to work in a house. Why, the best folks in town mostly does their own work; there's Mrs. Reid, so rich, just has a woman to do the charing; and Eelan--that's the beauty, you know--makes the pies and keeps the house spick-and-span. But you couldn't keep your own house clean, could you, sir?--let alone the meals; and you wouldn't live long if you hadn't _them_.'

As the days wore on, the schoolmaster became more urgent in his appeals for advice, but he did not get encouragement to expect to find a servant of any sort, for the widow was too sincere to suggest hope when she felt none, and the difficulty was not an easy one to solve. She made various inquiries among her friends. It was suggested that the master should go to 'the boarding-house,' which was a large barn-like structure, in which business men who did not happen to have families slept in uncomfortable rooms and dined at a noisy table. Mrs. Sims reported this suggestion faithfully, and added: 'But it's my belief it would kill you outright.'

The schoolmaster looked at his books and the trim arrangements of his neat house, and negatived the proposition with more decision than he had ever shown before.

After a while, Mrs. Sims received another idea of quite a different nature; but she did not report this so hastily--it required more finesse. It was entrusted to her care with many injunctions to be 'tactful,' and it was suggested that if there was a mess made of it, it would be her fault. The idea was nothing less than that it would be necessary for the master to marry; and it was the gaunt Miss Ann Blakely herself who confided to his present housekeeper that she should have no objections to become his bride, provided he wrote her a pretty enough, humble sort of letter that she could show to her friends.

'For, mind you, I'd not go cheap to the like of him,' she said, raising an admonis.h.i.+ng finger, as she took leave of her friend: 'I'd rather remain single, far.'

'I think he could write the letter,' replied Mrs. Sims; 'leastways, if he can't do that, I don't know what he can do, poor man.'

Having been solemnly enjoined to be careful, Mrs. Sims thought so long over what she was to say before she said it, that she made herself quite nervous, and when she began, she forgot the half. Over her sewing in the sitting-room one evening she commenced the subject with a fl.u.s.tered little run of words. 'I'm sure such an amiable man as you are, sir, almost three years I've been in this house and never had a word from you, not one word'--it is to be remarked that the widow did not intend to a.s.sert that the schoolmaster had been mute--'and you are nice in all your ways, too; if I do say it, quite the gentleman.'

'Oh!' said the schoolmaster, in a tone of surprise, not because he had heard what she said, but because he was surprised that she should begin to talk to him when he was correcting his books.

'And not a servant to be had far or near,' she went on with agitated volubility; 'and as for another like myself, of course that's too much to be hoped for.' She did not say this out of conceit, but merely as representing the actual state of affairs.

The schoolmaster began to look frightened. He was not a matter-of-fact person, but, as long as a man is a man, the prospect of being left altogether without his meals must be appalling.

'So, why you shouldn't get married, I don't know.' She added this in tremulous excitement, speaking in an argumentative way, as if she had led him by an ordered process of thought to an inevitable conclusion.

'Oh!' exclaimed the schoolmaster in surprise again, this time because he _had_ heard what was said.

The worst was over now; and Mrs. Sims, having once suggested the desperate idea of the necessity of marriage, could proceed more calmly.

She found, however, that she had to explain the notion at length before he could at all grasp it, and then she was obliged to urge its necessity for some time before he was willing to consider it. He became agitated in his turn, and, rising, walked up and down the room, his arms folded and an absent look in his eyes, as though he were thinking of things farther off.

'I do not mind telling you, for I believe you are a motherly woman, Mrs.

Sims, that it is not the first time that the thought of marriage has crossed my mind' (with solemn hesitation). 'I _have_ thought of it before; but I have always been hindered from giving it serious consideration from the belief that no woman would be willing to--ah--to marry me.'

'Well, of course there's some truth in that, sir,' said his faithful friend, reluctantly obliged by her conscience to say what she thought.

'Just so, Mrs. Sims,' said the schoolmaster with a patient sigh; 'and therefore, perhaps it will be unnecessary to discuss the subject further.'

'Still, there's no accounting for tastes; there might be some found that would.'

'It would not be necessary to find more than one,' said he, with a quiet smile.

'No, that's true, sir, which makes the matter rather easier. It's always been my belief that while there is life there is hope.'

'True, true,' he replied; and then he indulged in a long fit of musing, which she more than suspected had little to do with the immediate bearing of the subject on his present case. It was necessary to rouse him, for there was no time to be lost.

'Of course I don't say that there's many that would have you; there's girls enough--but laws! they'd all make game of you if you were to go a-courting to them, and, I take it, courting's not the sort of thing you're cleverest at.'

'True,' said the schoolmaster again, and again he sighed.

'But now, a good sensible woman, like Miss Blakely, as would keep you and your house clean and tidy, not to speak of cooking--I make bold to say you couldn't do better than to get such a one, if she might be so minded.'

'Who is Miss Blakely?' he asked wonderingly.

'It's her that visits the school so often; you've seen her time and again.'

'I recollect,' he said; 'but I have not spoken much with her.'

'That's just what I said,' she observed triumphantly. 'You'd be no more up to courting than cows are up to running races. Now, as to Miss Blakely, not being as young as some, nor to say good-looking, she might not stand on the ceremony of much courting; if you just wrote her one letter, asking her quite modest, and putting in a few remarks about flowers and that sort of thing, as you could do so well, being clever at writing, I give it as my opinion it's not unlikely she'd take you out of hand; not every one would, of course, but she has a kind heart, has Miss Blakely.'