A Dozen Ways Of Love. L. Dougall
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 scholarship 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 pass 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 admonishing 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 flustered 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 assert 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