David Fleming's Forgiveness. Margaret M. Robertson
know.
He had married, early in life, a pretty, commonplace woman, who had grown thin and querulous in the years that had passed since then, and who was not at all fitted to be the great lady of Gershom, as the rich man’s wife might have been. That place was filled by Elizabeth, who filled it well and enjoyed it.
With its large garden and orchard, and its sloping lawn, shaded by trees beginning to look old and venerable beside those of more recent growth in the village street, the old square house looked far more like the great house of the village than the finer mansion lately built by Jacob further up the hill. Under Elizabeth’s direction it had been modernised and beautified by the throwing out of a bow-window and the addition of a wide veranda on two sides. Everything about it, without and within, indicated wealth moderately used, for comfort and not for display. It was the pleasantest house in the village to visit at, everybody said; for the squire—so old Mr. Holt was generally called—was very hospitable, and all sorts of people were made welcome there.
There were by this time people in Gershom who had outlived the remembrance of the days when all the settlers, rich and poor alike, were socially on a level, and who spoke smoothly and loftily about “station” and “position” and “the working classes,” but the young Holts were not among them. Elizabeth and Clifton deserved less credit than was given them on account of their unassuming and agreeable manners with the village people, for they did not need to assert themselves as some others did. Miss Elizabeth, for all her unpretending ways, was the great lady of the village, and liked it, and very likely would have resented it had a rival appeared to call her right in question.
The Holts of the Hill were, in most respects, very different from the Holts of the village. They lived and worked and dressed and conducted themselves generally very much as they had been used to do in the early days of the settlement. The old man had been long dead, and his widow and her two daughters lived on the farm. One of the daughters was a childless widow, Betsey, the other had never married. “A good woman with an uncertain temper,” was the character which many of her friends would have given her, and some of them might have added that she had had a hard life and many cares, and no wonder that she was a little hard and sour after all she had passed through. But this was by no means all that could be said of Miss Betsey.
There was little intercourse between the Holts of the Hill and the village Holts, and it was not the fault of Elizabeth. It was Betsey who decidedly withdrew from any intimacy with her cousins. She was too old-fashioned, too “set” in her way to fall in with all their new notions, she said, and from the time that Elizabeth came home from school to be the mistress of her father’s house, and the most popular person in Gershom, she had had but little to do with her. It hurt Elizabeth that it should be so, for she respected her cousin and would have loved her, and would doubtless have profited—by their intercourse if it had been permitted. But she never got beyond a certain point in the intimacy with her, at least she did not for a time.
The Hill Holts were much respected in the neighbourhood, and Miss Betsey exerted an influence in its way almost as great as did Miss Elizabeth. One or two persons who knew them both well, said they were very much alike, though to people generally they seemed in temper, in tastes, and in manner of life as different as well could be. They were alike and they were different, and the chief difference lay in this, that Miss Betsey was growing old and had passed through troubles in her time, and Miss Elizabeth was young and had most of her troubles before her.
The village of Gershom Centre, as it was called, at this time lay chiefly on the north bank of the Beaver River. Its principal street ran north and south at right angles to the river, and the village houses clustered closest at the end of the bridge that crossed it. At the south end of the bridge another street turned west down the river, and at a little distance became a pleasant country road which led to the hill-farm of the Holts, and past it to the neighbouring township of Fosbrooke. Another street went east, on the north side of the river a few hundred yards, and then turned north to the Scotch settlement at the Gore.
On this street, before it turned north, the new church stood. There was a wide green common before it, shaded by young trees, and only the inclosing fence and the road lay between this and the river, which was broad and shallow, and flowed softly in this part of its course. The church was a very pretty one of its kind—white as snow, with large-paned windows, and green Venetian blinds. It had a tall slender spire, in which hung the first bell that had ever wakened the echoes in that part of the country for miles around, and of the church and the bell, and the pretty tree-shaded common before it, the Gershom people were not a little proud.
Behind the church lay the graveyard, already a populous place, as the few tall monuments and the many less pretentious slabs of grey or white stone showed. It was inclosed by a white fence tipped with black, and shaded by many young trees, and it was a quiet and pleasant place. Between the church and the graveyard was a long row of wooden sheds. They were not ornamental, quite the contrary; but they were very useful as a shelter for the horses of the church-goers who came from a distance, and they had been added by way of conciliating the North Gore people when one and another of them began to come to the village church.
Toward the church one fair Sabbath morning in June, many Gershom people were hastening. Already there were vehicles of great variety in the sheds, and horses were tied here and there along the fences under the trees. There were groups of people lingering in Gershom fashion on the church steps and on the grass, and the numbers, and the air of expectation over all, indicated that the occasion was one of more than usual interest. All Gershom had turned out hoping to see and hear the new minister, whose coming was to bean assurance of peace to the church and to the congregation. They were to be disappointed for that day, however, for the minister had not come. Squire Holt and his son and daughter came with the rest. The old man lingered at the gate exchanging greetings with his neighbours, and the young people went on toward the door.
“Gershom is the place after all, Lizzie,” said her brother. “It is pleasant to see all the folks again. But I don’t believe I’m going to stay to see Jacob through this business. Well! never mind, Lizzie,” he added, as his sister looked grave. “I’ll see you through, if you say so. And here come Ben and Cousin Betsey; let us wait and speak to them.”
“Clifton,” said his sister, earnestly, “Ben is Cousin Betsey’s best hand this summer. It won’t do to beguile him from his work, dear. You must not try it.”
“Nonsense, Elizabeth. It is rather soon to come down on a fellow like that, before I have even spoken to him. I never made Ben idle, quite the contrary.”
Coming slowly up the green slope between the gate and the church were the two persons recognised by Clifton as Ben and Cousin Betsey. They moved along in a leisurely way, nodding to one and speaking to another, so that there was time to discuss them as they approached.
“Lizzie,” said her brother, “do you suppose you’ll ever come to look like Cousin Betsey?”
“I am quite sure I shall never wear such a bonnet,” said Elizabeth, pettishly. “Why will she make a fright of herself?”
“It is as an offset to you—so fine as you are,” said Clifton, laughing. “She had that gown before Ben was born; I remember it perfectly.”
Miss Betsey Holt was a striking-looking person, notwithstanding the oddness and shabbiness of her dress. Scantiness is a better word for it than shabbiness, for her dress was of good material, neat and well preserved, but it was without a superfluous fold or gather, and in those days, when, even in country places, crinoline was beginning to assert itself, she did look ludicrously straight and stiff. Miss Elizabeth’s dress was neither in material nor make of the fashion that had its origin in the current year, and city people, wise in such matters, might have set them both down as old-fashioned. But in appearance, as they drew near one another, there was a great contrast between them, though in feature there was a strong resemblance.
There was more than fifteen years’ difference in their ages, and Betsey looked older than her forty years. She was above the middle height, thin and dark and wrinkled, and there were white streaks in the brown hair brought down low and flat upon the cheek, but in every feature the bright youthful