"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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d'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, circ.u.mstances 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 a.s.sured Mr Maxwell. She had a plan of study drawn out by the distinguished princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.s.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.s away, and they fell into their old ways again.

Miss Elizabeth counselled and encouraged, and discussed church affairs and Gershom affairs very much as she had always done, and no doubt the minister was as much the better through it as he had been from the first. Miss Essie sent letters to Mr Maxwell, many and long, and now and then a note to Miss Elizabeth, but that young lady's name was not very often mentioned between them.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

JACOB'S TROUBLES.