What Necessity Knows Part 14

He had come, he said, from the next station on the railway. He had been looking there, and in many other places, for an opening for his work, and for various reasons he had now decided that Ch.e.l.laston was a more eligible place than any. He had come in the early morning, and had called on the doctor and on Princ.i.p.al Trenholme of the College. They had both agreed that there was an opening for a young dentist who would do his work well, charge low prices, and be content to live cheaply till the Tillage grew richer. "It's just what _I_ want," he said. "I don't seem to care much about making money if I can live honestly among kind-hearted folks."

"But surely," cried Mrs. Rexford, "neither Dr. Nash nor Princ.i.p.al Trenholme suggested to you that Captain Rexford could give you rooms for--" She was going to say "pulling out teeth," but she omitted that.

The young man looked at her, evidently thinking of something else.

"Would you consider it a liberty, ma'am, if I--" He stopped diffidently, for, seeing by his manner that he meditated immediate action of some sort, she looked at him so fiercely that her glance interrupted him for a moment, "if I were to stop the stove smoking?" He completed the sentence with great humility, evidently puzzled to know how he had excited her look of offence.

She gave another excited poke at the damper herself, and, having got her hand blacked, wiped it on her coa.r.s.e grey ap.r.o.n. The diamond keeper above the wedding-ring looked oddly out of place, but not more so than the small, shapely hand that wore it. Seeing that she had done the stove no good, she sat back in her chair with her hands crossed upon her now dirty ap.r.o.n.

"You can do nothing with it. Before we came to Canada no one told us that the kitchen stoves invariably smoked. Had they done so I should have chosen another country. However, as I say to my children, we must make the best of it now. There's no use crying; there's no use lamenting. It only hara.s.ses their father."

The last words were said with a sharp glance of reproof at Blue and Red.

This mother never forgot the bringing up of her children in any one's presence, but she readily forgot the presence of others in her remarks to her children.

"But you aren't making the best of it," said the visitor. With that he got up, carefully lifted an iron piece in the back of the stove, turned a key thus disclosed in the pipe, and so materially altered the mood of the fire that in a few moments it stopped smoking and crackled nicely.

"Did you ever, mamma!" cried the girls. A juggler's feat could not have entertained them more.

"_If_ for a time, first off, you had someone in the house who had lived in this country, you'd get on first cla.s.s," said the youth.

"But you know, my dears," Mrs. Rexford spoke to her daughters, forgetting the young man for a moment as before, "if I had not supposed that Eliza understood the stove I should have inquired of Princ.i.p.al Trenholme before now."

"May I enquire where you got your help?" asked the American. "If she was from this locality she certainly ought to have comprehended the stove."

"She is a native of the country."

"As I say," he went on, with some emphasis, "if she comes from hereabouts, or further west, she ought to have understood this sort of a stove; but, on the other hand, if she comes from the French district, where they use only the common box stove, she would not understand this kind."

He seemed to be absorbed entirely in the stove, and in the benefit to them of having a "help," as he called her, who understood it.

"I think she comes from the lumbering country somewhere near the St.

Lawrence," said Mrs. Rexford, examining the key in the stove-pipe. She could not have said a moment before where Eliza had come from, but this phrase seemed to sum up neatly any remarks the girl had let fall about her father's home.

"_That_ accounts for it! Will you be kind enough to let me see her? I could explain the mechanism of this stove to her in a few words; then you, ma'am, need have no further trouble."

She said she should be sorry to trouble him. If the key were all, she could explain it.

"Pardon me"--he bowed again--"it is _not_ all. There are several inner dampers at the back here, which it is most important to keep free from soot. If I might only explain it to the help, she'd know once for all.

I'd be real glad to do you that kindness."

Mrs. Rexford had various things to say. Her speeches were usually complex, composed of a great variety of short sentences. She asked her daughters if they thought Eliza would object to coming down. She said that Eliza was invaluable, but she did not always like to do as she was asked. She thought the girl had a high temper. She had no wish to rouse her temper; she had never seen anything of it; she didn't wish to.

Perhaps Eliza would like to come down. Then she asked her daughters again if they thought Eliza would come pleasantly. Her remarks showed the track of her will as it veered round from refusal to a.s.sent, as bubbles in muddy water show the track of a diving insect. Finally, because the young man had a strong will, and was quite decided as to what he thought best, the girls were sent to fetch Eliza.

Blue and Red ran out of the kitchen. When they got into the next room they clasped one another and shook with silent laughter. As the door between the rooms did not shut tightly, they adjured one another, by dances and gestures, not to laugh loud. Blue danced round the table on her toes as a means of stifling her laughter. Then they both ran to the foot of the attic stair and gripped each other's arms very tight by way of explaining that the situation was desperate, and that one or other must control her voice sufficiently to call Eliza.

The dining-room they were in was built and furnished in the same style as the kitchen, save that here the wood was painted slate-colour and a clean rag carpet covered the floor. The upper staircase, very steep and dark, opened off it at the further end. All the light from a square, small-paned window fell sideways upon the faces of the girls as they stretched their heads towards the shadowed covert of the stairs.

And they could not, _could_ not, speak, although they made gestures of despair at each other and mauled each other's poor little arms sadly in the endeavour to prove how hard they were trying to be sober.

If any one wants to know precisely what they were laughing at, the only way would be to become for a time one of two girls to whom all the world is a matter of mutual mirth except when it is a matter of mutual tears.

Although it seemed very long to them, it was, after all, only a minute before Blue called in trembling tones, "Eliza!"

"Eliza!" called Red.

"Eliza! Eliza!" they both called, and though there was that in their voices which made it perfectly apparent to the young man in the next room, that they were laughing, so grand was their composure compared with what it had been before, that they thought they had succeeded admirably.

But when a heavy foot was heard overhead and an answering voice, and it was necessary to explain to Eliza wherefore she was called, an audible laugh did escape, and then Blue and Red scampered upstairs and made the communication there.

It spoke much for the strength and calibre of character of the girl who had so lately come into this family that a few minutes later, when the three girls entered the kitchen, it was Eliza who walked first, with a bearing equal to that of the other two and a dignity far greater.

The young man, who had been fidgeting with the stove, looked up gravely to see them enter, as if anxious to give his lesson; but had any one looked closely it would have been seen that his acute gaze covered the foremost figure with an intensity of observation that was hardly called for if he took no other interest in her than as a transient pupil in the matter of stove dampers.

Perhaps any one might have looked with interest at her. She was evidently young, but there was that in her face that put years, or at least experience of years, between her and the pretty young things that followed her. She was largely made, and, carrying a dimpled child of two years upon her shoulder, she walked erect, as Southern women walk with their burdens on their heads. It detracted little that her gown was of the coa.r.s.est, and that her abundant red hair was tossed by the child's restless hands. Eliza, as she entered the kitchen, was, if not a beautiful girl, a girl on the eve of splendid womanhood; and the young man, perceiving this almost faltered in his gaze, perhaps also in the purpose he was pursuing. The words of the lesson he had ready seemed to be forgotten, although his outward composure did not fail him.

Eliza came near, the child upon her shoulder, looked at him and waited.

"Eliza will hear what you have to say," said Mrs. Rexford.

"Oh," said he, and then, whatever had been the cause of his momentary pause, he turned it off with the plea that he had not supposed this to be "the--young lady who--wished to learn about the stove."

She received what he had to say without much appreciation, remarking that, with the exception of the one key, she had known it before.

As for him, he took up his cap to go. "Good-day, ma'am," he said; "I'm obliged for your hospitality. Ladies, I beg leave now to retire." He made his bow elaborately, first to Mrs. Rexford, then in the direction of the girls.

"My card, ma'am," he said, presenting Mrs. Rexford with the thing he mentioned.

Then he went out.

On the card was printed, "Cyril P. Harkness, M.D.S."

It was growing so dark that Mrs. Rexford had to go to the window to read it. As she did so, the young man's shadow pa.s.sed below the frosted pane as he made his way between snow-heaps to the main road.

CHAPTER XIV.

Next day Eliza went out with two of the little children. It was in the early afternoon, and the sun shone brightly. Eliza had an errand down the street, but every one knows that one does not progress very fast on an errand with a toddler of two years at one's side. Eliza sauntered, giving soothing answers to the little one's treble remarks, and only occasionally exerting herself to keep the liveliness of her older charge in check. Eliza liked the children and the suns.h.i.+ne and the road. Her saunter was not an undignified one, nor did she neglect her duty in any particular; but all the while there was an undercurrent of greater activity in her mind, and the under-thoughts were occupied wholly and entirely with herself and her own interests.

After walking in the open road for a little while she came under the great elm trees that held their leafless limbs in wide arch over the village street. Here a footpath was shovelled in the snow, on either side of the sleigh road. The sun was throwing down the graceful lines of elm twigs on path and snowdrift. The snow lawns in front of the village houses were pure and bright; little children played in them with tiny sledge and snow spade, often under the watchful eye of a mother who sat sewing behind the window pane. Now and then sleighs pa.s.sed on the central road with a cheerful jingle of bells.

When Eliza, with the children, came to the centre of the village, it became necessary to cross the street. She was bound for the largest shop, that stood under part of the great hotel, and just here, opposite the hotel, quite a number of sleighs were pa.s.sing. Eliza picked up the little one in her arms, and, taking the other child by the hand, essayed to cross. But one reckons without one's host in counting surely on the actions of children. St.u.r.dy five-year-old baulked like a little horse, and would not come. Eliza coaxed in vain. A long line of draught-horses, dragging blue box-sleighs, came slowly up the road, each jingling a heavy belt of bells. Five-year-old was frightened and would not come.

Eliza, without irritation, but at the same time without hesitation, took it by the waist under her left arm and started again. She got half across before the child seemed thoroughly to realise what was occurring, and then, with head and arms in front and little gaitered legs behind, it began to struggle so violently that the young woman, strong and composed as she was, was brought for a minute to a standstill.

Two men were watching her from the smoking-room of the hotel; the one an elderly man, the owner of the house, had his attention arrested by the calm force of character Eliza was displaying; the other, the young American dentist, saw in the incident an excuse for interference, and he rushed out now to the rescue, and gallantly carried the little naughty one safely to the right side of the road.

Eliza, recognising him, saw that he was looking at her with the pleasant air of an old acquaintance--one, in fact, who knew her so well that any formal greeting was unnecessary--not that she knew anything about greetings, or what might or might not be expected, but she had an indistinct sense that he was surprisingly friendly.