A Dozen Ways Of Love by Lily Dougall (lightweight ebook reader txt) 📕

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All about them the hills were covered with the year's first snow. How bright the light was upon their heights! how soft the shadows that gathered in their slopes! The fields were white also, and the hedgerows. Above them the sky was veiled with snow clouds, soft and grey, except that at the verge of east and west there were faint metallic lines, such as one sees upon clouds across snowfields, like the pale reflections of a distant fire. Jen had come to a full stop now. She raised her hands to her face and sobbed out like a little child.

Skelton stood by her, feeling his own feebleness. 'I know you are in great trouble,' he said.

Her sobs did not last long; she soon mastered them, not by any art of concealment but by rude force. Then standing shame-faced, with half-averted head, she wiped her eyes with her apron.

'Yes, sir, I'm in great trouble, greater ner ye can know, fur death's neither here nor there--it's living that's hard. Parson, he speaks out about preparing to die, but to my mind it takes a sight more preparing to know how to go on living.'

'I know that you have greater trouble than your mother's death. I know that you love a young man who loves you, and also what it is that you think keeps you apart from him.'

'And how do you know that, sir?' she asked, still with averted face.

Then he confessed, humbly enough, just how he did know it, and all that he knew, and told her about his visit to Yarm. When he spoke of Yarm and his visit to Daniel McGair she turned and looked full at him, drinking in every word with hungry curiosity.

'Yes, sir, we left the place, an' I haven't heard o' him this nine year, but I knowed he wasn't dead.'

'How did you know that, Jen?'

'Because, sir, when God A'mighty sees fit that he should die, I'll be free o' him, that's all.'

'And aren't you going to marry?'

'Noae, sir. Johnnie an' me has talked it over, an' he says as how he'll wait till such time as I'm free. An' I didn't say "no" to him, fur when one knows what it is to love true, sir, one knows well it's noae use to say as this thing's best or t'other, but just it's like being taken up like a leaf by the wind an' moved whether one will or no. There's just this diff'rence betwixt true love an' the common kind--the common kind o' love moves ye i' the wrong way, an' true love i' the right; fur it's a true word the blessed St. John said when he said that love is God.'

'Did St. John say that?' said Skelton.

'Yes, sir, I read it to mother just afore she died. An' Johnnie's gone across the sea, sir, wi' his mother; he got a right good chance to better hisself, an' I made him go. His ship sailed the day after Christmas; an' I said, "Johnnie, I'll bide here, an' God 'ull take care o' me as well as ye could yerself;" an' I said, "Johnnie, I'll pray every day, night an' morning, that if ye can forget me, ye will; for if ye can forget, then yer love's not o' the right sort, as I could take, or God 'ud want ye to give; and if ye can't forget, then there's nowt to say but as I'll bide here." An' I said, sir, as he munna think as loving him made me sad, fur I was a big sight happier to love him, if he forgets or if he comes again.'

'Will you live here; Jen, where the neighbours distrust you?'

'It 'ud just be the same any other place, sir, an' here I can work i' the fields, spring and harvest, an' earn my own bread. I know the fields, sir, an' the hills--they's like friends to me now, an' I knows the dumb things about, an' they all knows me. It's a sight o' help one can get, sir, when one's down wi' the sorrow o' all the world lying on the heart, to have a kind look an' a word wi' the dogs an' cows when they comes down the hills fur the milking. An' the children they mostly lets come to me now, though they kep 'em from me at first.

Then he told her that he had come a long way on purpose to see if he could help her; that he felt ashamed of having listened to her story, and that it would give him happiness in some way or other to make her life more easy. He explained that he had a great deal of money and many friends, and could easily give her anything that these could procure. In saying this he did not disguise from himself for a moment that his motive was mixed, and that he desired to gain some hold over her, such as benevolence could give, that he might further examine the problem of her extraordinary misfortune. Even as he spoke he marvelled at the strength of his respect for her, which could so outweigh his own interest as to make it impossible that he should interfere in her affairs otherwise than with all deference, as if she were a lady.

When he had made it quite clear to her that he was able and willing to give her anything she should ask, she thought of his words a while, and then answered--

'I thank ye, sir, but there's nowt ye can do o' that sort, fur if there was I'd take it from Johnnie an' none other. But there's one thing I'll ask, sir, an' wi' all yer kind offers ye can't but agree to it, fur it's not much. Ye've found out this tale o' my life; there's none else as knows it, save mother lying dead, an' Johnnie I telled fur love's sake, an' him as lies palsied i' Yarm--God A'mighty only knows, sir, what Dan'el McGair could tell on't--but this I ask, sir,--that ye'll keep all ye knows an' say nowt. I did Dan'el a great wrong, for I smiled on him whiles for the sake o' power; not but what he did me a worse wrong, so far worse that whiles I think no woman has so sore a life as me; but I did do him wrong, sir, and fur that reason I'll not ha' his name blazed abroad, hanging on to a tale as 'ud buzz i' the ears o' all. To tell it 'ud not make _my_ life worse but better, fur now them as sees this thing says dark things, an' speaks o' the devil an' worse. The times ha' been when I cursed God an' prayed to die, but, thank Heaven, when I learned what love was, I learned as God A'mighty can love us in spite o' our wrong-doing, an' the pain it brings. Th' use o' such sore pain as mine, sir, isna fur us to say, or to think great things to bear it patient; but the use o' life, sir, to my thinking, is to keep all His creatures from pain if we can, an' to take God's love like the sunshine, an' be thankful. So I'll ask ye to keep what ye knows o' this tale an' not speak on't, an' go no more to Yarm; an' if ye'll give me yer hand on that, sir, I'll thank ye kindly.'

So he gave her his hand on it, and went away.


XII

A FREAK OF CUPID

CHAPTER I

The earth was white, the firmament was white, the plumage of the wind was white. The wind flew between curling drift and falling cloud, brushing all comers with its feathers of light dry snow. At the sides of the road the posts and bars of log-fences stood above the drifts; on the side of the hill the naked maple trees formed a soft brush of grey; just in sight, and no more, the white tin roof and grey walls of a huge church and a small village were visible; all else was unbroken snow. The surface of an ice-covered lake, the sloping fields, the long straight road between the fences, were as pure, in their far-reaching whiteness, as the upper levels of some cloud in shadeless air.

A young Englishman was travelling alone through this region. He had set out from the village and was about to cross the lake. A shaggy pony, a small sleigh, a couple of buffalo-robes and a portmanteau formed his whole equipment. The snow was light and dry; the pony trotted, although the road was soft; the young man, wrapped in his fur-lined coat, had little to do in driving.

In England no one would set out in such a storm; but this traveller had learned that in Canada the snowy vast is regarded as a plaything, or a good medium of transit, or at the worst, an encumbrance to be plodded through as one plods through storms of rain. He had found that he was not expected to remain at an inn merely because it snowed, and, being a man of spirit, he had on this day, as on others, done what was expected of him.

To-day, in the snow and wind, there was a slight difference from the storms of other days. The innkeeper, who had given him his horse an hour before by the walls of the great tin-roofed church, had looked at the sky and the snow, and asked if he knew the road well; but this had been accepted as an ignorant distrust of the foreign gentleman. Having learned his lesson, that through falling snow he must travel, into the heart of this greater snowstorm he travelled, valiant, if somewhat doubtful.

When he descended upon the ice of the lake he was no longer accompanied by the grey length of the log-fences. This road across the lake had been well tracked after former snowfalls, and so the untrodden snow rose high on either side; branches of fir and cedar, stuck at short intervals in these snow walls, marked out the way. The pony ceased to trot. The driver was only astonished that this cessation of speed had not come sooner.

Standing up in his sleigh and looking round he could see two or three other sleighs travelling across nearer the village. The village he could no longer see, scarcely even the hill, nor was there any communication over the deep untrodden snow between his road and that other on which there were travellers.

Another hour passed, and now, as he went on slowly up the length of the lake, all sound and sight of other sleighs were lost. The cloud was not dark; the snow fell in such small flakes that it did not seem that even an infinite number of them could bury the world; the wind drifting them together, though strong, was not boisterous; the March evening did not soon darken: and yet there was something in the determined action of cloud and wind and snow, making the certainty that night would come with no abatement, which caused even the inexperienced Englishman to perceive that he was passing into the midst of a heavy storm.

As is frequently the case with travellers, he had certain directions concerning the road which appeared to be adequate until he was actually confronted with that small portion of the earth's surface to which it was necessary to apply them. He was to take the first road which crossed his, running from side to side of the lake; but the first cross track appeared to him