Lizbeth of the Dale Part 22

The Coulson family drove away, with a bunch of early Dale rhubarb, and green onions, under the carriage seat, along with a fresh loaf of Mother MacAllister's bread, and a roll of Auntie Jinit McKerracher's b.u.t.ter, and a jar of Granny Teeter's cider. When they were gone, John went into the study for a talk with his father alone, and Elizabeth and Mary repaired to their little room to discuss the week's doings. It was not the bare room it once was; the girl's deft hands had decorated it with cheap but dainty muslin curtains, pictures, and bric-a-brac.

Elizabeth went down on her knees to clear out a bureau drawer for the clothes she had brought.

She laughed as she brought up some old treasures. Here was a pair of white pillow covers that Mrs. Jarvis had sent her on her thirteenth birthday. There was a motto outlined on each, and silk threads for working it had accompanied the gift. But Elizabeth had finished only one, and put a half-dozen st.i.tches into the other. "Look at those!"

she cried, half-laughing, half-ashamed, as she hung them over a chair.

"I wonder when I'll ever get them finished." Mary picked them up, and examined them. "You really ought to do them, Lizzie. They'd be so pretty for our bed done in the pale blue silk." She read the mottoes aloud, "I slept and dreamed that life was beauty," and the second, "I awoke and found that life was duty." "It's just like you to drop a thing in the middle and not finish it." Mary was growing more like her Aunt Margaret every day in her stately prim manner.

"I didn't drop it in the middle, Miss Wiseacre," said her sister.

"Can't you see I started the Duty one. It's ten st.i.tches past the middle!" She caught them up, bound "the beauty one" about her head, stuck the other into her belt for an ap.r.o.n, twisted her face up into a perfect imitation of Auntie Jinit McKerracher, and proceeded to give Mary the latest piece of gossip, in a broad Scotch accent, ending up as Auntie Jinit always did, "Noo, ah'm jist tellin' ye whit ah heered, an'

if it's a lee, ah didna mak it!"

Mary laughed till the tears came. Lizzie was so absurd and so funny.

But the fit of laughter at her antics brought on a fit of coughing, and a voice called from the foot of the stairs--"Mary, Mary, are you sitting up in that chilly room? Come right down to the stove at once."

Mary went coughing down the stairs, and Elizabeth listened unconcerned.

Mary had always been coughing and always been chased to the stove ever since she could remember. She folded her head-dress and put it into the drawer. She glanced at its inscription, "I slept and dreamed that life was beauty." She was sleeping these happy days, and dreaming too that life was all joy. The other pillow-cover slipped from her belt and lay on the floor. Her careless foot trampled it. It was the one that read, "I awoke and found that life was duty." The significance of her unconscious act did not reach her. She hummed a gay song learned at school, as she crammed the pieces of embroidery into a drawer. They were merely embroidery to Elizabeth, and so was life. She had not yet read the inscription traced over it by the finger of G.o.d, and knew not its divine meaning.

But in the silence of the little room, the remembrance of Dr.

Primrose's fell message suddenly returned. It was the first time she had recalled it all that long, happy day. Well, there was no use worrying, she concluded philosophically. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof, and she ran down the stairs singing.

The summer holidays soon came, and Elizabeth left Cheemaun under a cloud. She had failed, while the rest of the family had succeeded.

Everyone came home bearing laurels but her, and her aunt keenly felt the one shadow over the family glory.

Nevertheless, for Elizabeth the vacation pa.s.sed gayly. She seemed to be the only one who did not grieve over her lack of success. She was indeed the only really Gay Gordon, so studious and hard-working had they all become.

Elizabeth somehow seemed the only one also who managed to play all the time. She had the faculty of turning everything into play. John hired with Tom Teeter for the summer, and Charles Stuart toiled all day in his own fields. Jean came home laden with books, and studied both night and day. Even Malcolm in his two weeks' vacation busied himself in the garden with his father. But Elizabeth seemed to have no definite place a.s.signed her in the domestic economy. Mary had such light duties as her health permitted, but she refused all her sister's offers of a.s.sistance. Lizzie was sure to get the darning all tangled and spoiled, and if one left her any sewing to do, one might see her next moment chasing Jamie down the lane, with the unsewed article left hanging over a raspberry bush. Yes, Lizzie was no good, as Sarah Emily declared when she ventured into the kitchen, and the only time she appeared at an advantage was during Annie's weekly visits when she excelled everyone in her care of the baby. Even her aunt had to admit her superiority here. She was as careful, as wise and responsible as Miss Gordon could wish, and she often wondered how the reckless, nonsensical girl could be so suddenly transformed. But then Miss Gordon was still far from understanding her niece.

Elizabeth's days were very full in spite of her idleness. There were her weekly visits to Mother MacAllister, frequent calls on poor Susie lying in pain on her hard bed, and even an occasional call upon Rosie away down in Forest Glen. Rosie hailed Elizabeth's visits with delight, though she was too busy to return them. The Carricks were toiling night and day, sewing, and preserving fruit, and "hooking" mats and quilting quilts. For in the fall, just at the season when a wedding trip to the Toronto Autumn Exhibition was looked upon as the most fashionable social departure in the countryside, Rosie and Hector McQueen, who had never outlived the days of chivalry, were to be married! It made Elizabeth feel old and queer and dreadfully sorry for Rosie all at one moment just to think about it.

Elizabeth was sometimes possessed with the feeling that she was outside everybody else's life. Of course there was John. He was her chum and her soul's companion, but the rest of the family seemed to live in a world full of interests into which she could not enter. Jean was burning with ambition. She talked only of her studies, of her progress and aspirations in the teaching profession, and of Miss Mills, with whom she studied. Miss Mills was a mathematical wonder, Jean declared, but in Elizabeth's opinion, she was a tough mathematical problem clothed in partially human flesh. She wondered much at Miss Mills, and at Jean too, and tried to catch her enthusiasm. But she could see nothing in Jean's life over which to grow enthusiastic.

Another person who seemed to have grown away from her was Charles Stuart. The Pretender had changed within the last few years. He was a tall, broad-shouldered young man now, and his dark eyes did not dance so mischievously in his handsome face. They wore something of the expression of dreamy kindness that lay in the depths of his mother's gray eyes. He was generally very quiet too, given to sitting alone with a book, and Elizabeth often found him dull and stupid.

Mother MacAllister sometimes seemed worried over him, and Elizabeth wondered much what could be the reason. Had the Pretender been wild and bad as he used to be she could have understood, but he seemed so quiet and steady.

One evening she came near divining the reason for her anxious looks.

Elizabeth still kept up her Sat.u.r.day afternoon visit to Mother MacAllister, and to-night they had had the blue dishes for tea. As she wiped them and arranged them on the high shelf of the cupboard, Mother MacAllister went down cellar to attend to her milk. Elizabeth finished her work and picked up a book Charles Stuart had left on the window.

It was a theological work, and as Mother MacAllister came out of the cool cellar, the girl looked up joyfully.

"Then Stuart is going to be a minister after all, is he?"

The mother's beautiful eyes grew eager, hungry. "Would he be saying that to you, lovey?" she asked in a half-whisper.

"No. But this book; it's a theological work. I thought from it----"

Elizabeth's heart was touched by the expression on Mother MacAllister's face. It had grown very sad. She glanced at the book and shook her head. "No, no, dearie," she said, and there was a quiver in her voice that made the girl's heart contract. "I am afraid it is books like that one that will be keeping young men away from the truth."

Elizabeth patted her arm in silent sympathy. She knew Mother MacAllister's great ambition for her boy. And Charles Stuart was such an orator too--it seemed too bad. She picked up the book again, glancing through it, and thought surely Mother MacAllister must be mistaken. It seemed such an entirely good sort of book, like "Pilgrim's Progress," or something of that sort.

"What are you going to be?" she asked as Charles Stuart walked home with her in the golden August, evening along Champlain's Road.

"I don't know," said the young man. "Sometimes I think I'd like to go in for medicine. But my four years in Arts will put me hopelessly behind John. I really haven't decided what I'll do."

"I remember you used to be divided between the ministry and veterinary surgery," reminded Elizabeth.

He laughed. "I think there is about equal chances between them still,"

he said, and Elizabeth's older self saw he did not wish to pursue the subject. She was very sorry for Mother MacAllister, but on the whole she still thought Charles Stuart was wise in choosing some less exacting profession than the ministry.

But the joyous holidays, driving over the country with John and Charles Stuart, wandering on berry-picking tramps with Archie and Jamie, or spending hours of adoration before the Vision, could not last forever.

Malcolm's departure after his short vacation saw the beginning of the end. The last week of August came and Jean packed her books and went back to her teaching, her studies, and her beloved Miss Mills. And then September ripened into October, and college days had come.

As the day of the boys' departure approached, Elizabeth felt as though she had come to the end of all things. Her own High School days were over, ended in failure; she was not needed at home, she was no use away from home, and she had a vague feeling that she was not wanted anywhere.

The night before the boys left, Charles Stuart came over to say good-by, and before he went home Mr. Gordon led family worship. He read the 91st Psalm, that one he always chose for the evening reading the night before any of his loved ones left the home nest. He had read it often by this time, but it never lost its effect upon the young people's hearts. It made a grand farewell from the father to his children, a promise to both of perfect security in the midst of all dangers.

"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.... Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shall thou trust....

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day.... For He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways."

The spell of the wonderful words was still over the young folks' hearts as Elizabeth and John walked up the lane with Charles Stuart. The latter was particularly quiet. Elizabeth had noticed that his eyes were moist and his voice very husky when he had bidden her father good-by. She herself was very, very sad and lonely to-night, and the weird beauty of the moonlit valley only added to her melancholy.

The night was still young, and up above the Long Hill there lingered the gold and pink of the sunset. Above the black pines of Arrow Hill a great round moon hung in the amethyst skies. And low over the valley there stretched a misty veil of gold and silver, a magic web woven by the fingers of the moonrise held out in farewell to touch the fairy hands of the sunset. It was such a night as could intoxicate Elizabeth. As the boys stood making arrangements for their early morning drive to Cheemaun, she leaned over the gate and looked down the long ghostly white line of Champlain's Road, hearing only the soft splash of the mill water-fall coming up through the scented dusk. She scarcely noticed Charles Stuart's farewell; nor his lingering hand-clasp. When he was gone she went upstairs to her room, and long after Mary and the rest of the household were asleep, she sat by the window. And for the first time she strove to put on paper the thoughts that were surging in her heart, demanding expression.

Elizabeth had written many, many rhymes, but they had all been gay and nonsensical. She had never tried before to express a serious thought.

And to-night, she did not guess that her success was due to the fact that her heart was aching over the parting with John.

CHAPTER XII

LEFT BEHIND

And so the barque Elizabeth was left stranded while the stream of progress swept onward, bearing her friends. After the boys had left, the languorous October days pa.s.sed very slowly at The Dale, and Elizabeth's energies of both body and mind soon began to cry out for a wider field of activity.

She was hourly oppressed with a sense of her own uselessness, a feeling her aunt's aggrieved manner tended to foster. Her heart smote her as she saw everyone at work but herself. She tried to help her father with his township affairs, but he met all her offers of a.s.sistance with his indulgent smile, and the remark that little girls could not understand business, and she must not bother her head.

Neither could she find any regular occupation about the house. Sarah Emily, who had conceived a great respect for Elizabeth since she had been living in the town, refused to let her soil her hands in the kitchen. It was too much of a come-downer, she declared, for a lady educated away up high the way Lizzie was to be sloppin' round with an ap.r.o.n on. Why didn't she sit still and read books, the way Jean did?

And Sarah Emily's will was not to be disputed. She was even more than usually independent these days, for without doubt a real suitor for her hand had appeared at The Dale kitchen. He was none of those "finest young gents as ever was seen," that existed only in Sarah Emily's imagination; but a real, solid, flesh-and-blood young farmer, none less than Wully Johnstone's Peter, now the eldest son at home, and to whom the farm was to eventually fall. Since Peter had openly avowed his intentions, Sarah Emily had been thrown into alternate fits of ecstasy over her good fortune,--which she strove to hide under a mask of haughty indifference--and spasms of dismay over the wreck she was making of poor Tom Teeter's life. That Tom was in a frightful way, she could not but see; for, as she confided to Elizabeth, it fairly made her nerves all scrunch up to hear him sing that awful doleful song about wishin' she would marry him.

Elizabeth suggested to her aunt, that as Sarah Emily was likely soon to give notice finally and forever, that she should be the one to take up the burden of the housekeeping. But Miss Gordon seemed unwilling that Elizabeth should find any settled place in the household. Mary was quite sufficient help, she said, and when Sarah Emily left of course another maid must succeed her. There really was nothing for Elizabeth to do, she added, with a grieved sigh.

She was equally averse to any proposition on the part of the girl to go away and earn her own living. Now that there was no hope of her ever becoming a school-teacher, Miss Gordon said, with a heavier sigh than usual, there was really no other avenue open for a young lady that was quite genteel.

And then Elizabeth would sigh too, very deeply, and wish with all her soul that she had had just sufficient mathematics in her head to meet the requirements of the cast-iron system of the Education Department, which unfortunately required all heads to be exactly alike.

Meanwhile, her nature being too buoyant to allow her to fret, she managed to put in the days in a way that made even her aunt confess that the old house was much brighter for her presence. Mary was her constant companion, glad of any contingency that kept Lizzie near her.

But beyond the home-circle she found little congenial friendship.