The Inglises Part 15

"Miss Bethia, I don't know what to say to you," said Mrs Inglis.

"Well, don't say anything, then. It seems to me you owe it to your husband's memory to keep the books together. For my part, I don't see how you can think of refusing my offer, as you can't take them with you."

"To care for the books--yes--"

"See here, David!" said Miss Bethia, "what do you say about it? You are a boy of sense. Tell your ma there's no good being so contrary--I mean--I don't know what I mean, exactly," added she. "I shall have to think it over a spell."

David turned his eyes toward his mother in wonder--in utter perplexity, but said nothing.

"There! I'll have to tell it after all; and I hope it won't just spoil my pleasure in it; but I shouldn't wonder. The money ain't mine--hasn't been for quite a spell. I set it apart to pay David's expenses at college; so it's his, or yours till he's of age, if you're a mind to claim it. Your husband knew all about it."

"My husband!" repeated Mrs Inglis.

"Yes; and now I shouldn't wonder if I had spoiled it to you, too. I told him I was going to give it for that. As like as not he didn't believe me," said Miss Bethia, with a sob. "I've had my feelings considerably hurt, one way and another, this afternoon. There wouldn't any of you have been so surprised if any one else had wanted to do you a kindness--if you will have that it's a kindness. I know some folks have got to think I'm stingy and mean, because--"

"Aunt Bethia," said David, taking her hand in both his, "that is not what we think here."

"No, indeed! We have never thought that," said Violet, kissing her.

Then David kissed her, too, reddening a little, as boys will who only kiss their mothers when they go to bed, or their very little sisters.

"Miss Bethia," said Mrs Inglis, "my husband always looked upon you as a true friend. I do not doubt but that your kindness in this matter comforted him at the last."

"Well, then, it's settled--no more need be said. If I were to die to-night, it would be found in my will all straight. And you wouldn't refuse to take it if I were dead, would you? Why should you now? unless you grudge me the pleasure of seeing it. Oh! I've got enough more to keep me--if that's what you mean--if I should live for forty years, which ain't likely."

So what could Mrs Inglis do but press her hand, murmuring thanks in the name of her children and her husband.

Miss Bethia's spirits rose.

"And you'll have to be a good boy, David, and adorn the doctrine of your Saviour, so as to fill your father's place."

"Miss Bethia, I can never do that. I am not good at all."

"Well, I don't suppose you are. But grace abounds, and you can have it for the asking."

"But, Miss Bethia, if you mean this because--you expect me to be a minister, like papa, I am not sure, and you may be disappointed--and then--"

"There ain't much one _can_ be sure of in this world," said Miss Bethia, with a sigh. "But I can wait. You are young--there's time enough. If the Lord wants you for His service, He'll have you, and no mistake.

There's the money, at any rate. Your mother will want you for the next five years, and you'll see your way clearer by that time, I expect."

"And do you mean that the money is to be mine--for the university-- whether I am to be a minister or not? I want to understand, Miss Bethia."

"Well, it was with the view of your being a minister, like your father, that I first thought of it, I don't deny," said Miss Bethia, gravely.

"But it's yours any way, as soon as your mother thinks best to let you have it. If the Lord don't want you for his minister, I'm very sure _I_ don't. If He wants you, He'll have you; and that's as good a way to leave it as any."

There was nothing more to be said, and Miss Bethia had her way after all. And a very good way it was.

"And we'll just tell the neighbours that I am to take care of the books till you know where you are to put them--folks take notice of everything so. That'll be enough to say. And, David, you must make out a list of them,--two, indeed,--one to leave with me and one to take, and I'll see to all the rest."

And so it was settled. The book-case and the books were never moved.

They stand in the study still, and are likely to do so for a good while to come.

This is as good a place as any to tell of Miss Bethia's good fortune.

She was disposed, at first, to think her fortune anything but good; for it took out of her hands the house that had been her home for the last thirty years of her life--where she had watched by the death-bed of father, mother, sister. It destroyed the little twenty-acre farm, which, in old times, she had sowed and planted and reaped with her own hands, bringing to nothing the improvements which had been the chief interest of her life in later years; for, in spite of her determined resistance, the great Railway Company had its way, as great companies usually do, and laid their plans, and carried them out, for making the Gourlay Station there.

So the hills were levelled, and the hollows filled up; the fences and farming implements, and the house itself, carried out of the way, and all the ancient landmarks utterly removed.

"Just as if there wasn't enough waste land in the country, but they must take the home of a solitary old woman to put their depots, and their engines, and their great wood-piles on," said Miss Bethia, making a martyr of herself.

But, of course, she was well paid for it all, and, to her neighbours, was an object of envy rather than of pity; for it could not easily be understood by people generally, how the breaking-up of her house seemed to Miss Bethia like the breaking-up of all things, and that she felt like a person lost, and friendless, and helpless for a little while.

But there, was a bright side to the matter, she was, by and by, willing to acknowledge. She knew too well the value of money--had worked too hard for all she had, not to feel some come complacency in the handsome sum lodged in the bank in her name by the obnoxious company.

It is a great thing to have money, most people think, and Miss Bethia might have had a home in any house in Gourlay that summer if she chose.

But she knew that would not suit anybody concerned long; so, when it was suggested to her that she should purchase the house which the departure of Mrs Inglis and her children left vacant, she considered the matter first, and then accomplished it. It was too large for her, of course, but she let part of it to Debby Stone, who brought her invalid sister there, and earned the living of both by working as a tailoress. Miss Bethia did something at that, too, and lived as sparingly as she had always done, and showed such shrewdness in investing her money, and such firmness in exacting all that was her due, that some people, who would have liked to have a voice in the management of her affairs, called her hard, and a screw, and wondered that an old woman like her should care so much for what she took so little good of.

But Miss Bethia took a great deal of good out of her money, or out of the use she made of it, and meant to make of it; and a great many people in Gourlay, and out of it, knew that she was neither hard nor a screw.

And the book-case still stood up-stairs, and Miss Bethia took excellent care of the books, keeping the curtains drawn and the room dark, except when she had visitors. Then the light was let in, and she grew eloquent over the books and the minister, and the good he had done her in past days; but no one ever heard from her lips how the books came to be left in her care, or what was to become of them at last.

CHAPTER NINE.

May has come again, and the Inglises had been living a whole year in Singleton; or, rather, they had been living in a queer little house just out of Singleton. The house itself was well enough, and the place had been a pretty place once; but Miss Bethia's enemies--the great Railway Company--had been at work on it, and about it, and they had changed a pretty field of meadow-land, a garden and an orchard, into a desolate-looking place, indeed. There was no depot or engine-house in the immediate neighbourhood, but the railway itself came so close to it, and rose so high above it, that the engine-driver might almost have looked down the cottage chimney as he pa.s.sed.

Just beyond the town of Singleton, the highway was crossed by the railway, and, in one of the acute angles which the intersection made, the little house stood. On the side of the house, most distant from the crossing, were two bridges (one on the railway and the other on the high road), both so high and so strong as to seem quite out of place over the tiny stream that, for the greater part of the year, ran beneath them.

It was a large stream at some seasons, however, and so was the Single River into which it fell; and the water from the Single sometimes set back under the bridges and over the low land till the house seemed to stand on an island. The Single River could not be seen from the house, although it was so near, because the railway hid it, and all else in that direction, except the summit of a distant mountain, behind which, at midsummer-time, the sun went down. From the other side, the road was seen, and a broken field, over which a new street or two had been laid out, and a few dull-looking houses built; and to the right of these streets lay the town.

It was not a pretty place, but it had its advantages. It was a far better home to which to bring country-bred children than any which could have been found within their means in the town. They could not hesitate between it and the others which they went to see; and, as Mr Oswald had something to do with the Railway Company, into whose hands it had fallen, it was easily secured. There were no neighbours very near, and there was a bit of garden-ground--the three-cornered piece between the house and the crossing, and a strip of gra.s.s, and a hedge of willows and alders on the other side, on the edge of the little stream between the two bridges, and there was no comparison between the house and any of the high and narrow brick tenements with doors opening right upon the dusty street.

And so the mother and the children came to make a new home there, and they succeeded. It was a happy home. Not in quite the same way that their home in Gourlay had been happy. No place could ever be quite like that again; but when the first year came to an end, and the mother looked back over all the way by which they had been led, she felt that she had much cause for grat.i.tude and some cause for joy. The children had, in the main, been good and happy; they had had all the necessaries and some of the comforts of life; they had had no severe illness among them, and they had been able to keep out of debt.

To some young people, all this may not seem very much in the way of happiness, but, to Mrs Inglis, it seemed much, and to the children too.

Mrs Inglis had not opened a school. The house was too small for that, and it was not situated in a part of the town where there were likely to be many pupils. She had taught three or four little girls along with her own children, but the number had not increased.

During the first six months of their stay in Singleton, Violet had been house-keeper. The change had not been altogether pleasant for her, but she had submitted to it cheerfully, and it had done her good. She had become helpful and womanly in a way that would have delighted old Mrs Kerr's heart to see. To her mother and her brothers she was "one of the children" still, but strangers were beginning to look upon her as a grown-up young lady, a good many years older than David or Jem.

To Jem, for whom his mother had feared most, the change had been altogether advantageous. He had come to Singleton with the avowed intention of going regularly to school, as his mother wished, for six months, and then he was going to seek his fortune. But six months pa.s.sed, and the year came to an end, and Jem was still a pupil in the school of Mr Anstruther--a man among a thousand, Jem thought. He was a great mathematician, at any rate, and had a kind heart, and took interest and pleasure in the progress of one who, like himself, went to his work with a will, as Jem certainly did in these days.

Jem's wish to please his mother brought him this reward, that he came to take great pleasure in his work, and all the more that he knew he was laying a good foundation for success in the profession which he had chosen, and in which he meant to excel. For Jem was going to be an engineer, and work with his hands and his head too; and though he had no more chances of shoeing horses now, he had, through a friend of his, many a good chance of handling iron, both hot and cold, in the great engine-house at the other side of the town. So Jem had made great advance toward manliness since they had come to Singleton.

Greater than David had made, some of the Gourlay people thought, who saw both the lads about this time. Even his mother thought so for a while.

At least she thought that Jem had changed more than Davie, and more for the better. To be sure, there had been more need, for Davie had always been a sensible, well-behaved lad, and even the most charitable and kindly-disposed among the neighbours could not always say that of Jem.

Davie was sensible and well-behaved still, but there was none of the children about whom the mother had at first so many anxious thoughts as about David.

To none of them had the father's death changed everything so much as to him. Not that he had loved his father more than the others, but for the last year or two he had been more with him. Both his work and his recreation had been enjoyed with him, and all the good seemed gone from everything to him since his father died. His new work in Singleton was well done, and cheerfully, and the knowledge that he was for the time the chief bread-winner of the family, would have made him do any work cheerfully. But it was not congenial or satisfying work. For a time he had no well defined duty, but did what was to be done at the bidding of any one in the office, and often he was left irritable and exhausted after a day, over which he could look back with no pleasure because of anything that he had accomplished.

He could not fall back for recreation on his books, as his mother suggested. He tried it oftener than she knew, but the very sight of the familiar pages, over which he used to ponder with such interest, brought back the "study," and the old happy days, and his father's face and voice, and made him sick with longing for them all. There was no comfort to be got from his books at this time. Nor from anything else.