“But that is what the Lord says we are to be,” he tells her. “Planted crosswise to the world, as you put it, at odds with family and friends and all the world around us, for His sake.”
The idea pleases her. Trif Bradbury, a warrior for truth, at odds to all the world. One of the faithful ones who keeps the commandments and has the testimony of Jesus, who will not be shaken even in the time of trial.
Missing Point
August, 1907
Dearest Peony,
I know how you disdain what you call my “religious enthusiasms” and that yours is a Quieter Faith, yet I long to sit down with you and show you what I have learned, what I am learning, about the prophecies of the End Times.
I have envied you your opportunities for learning in the Wider World, but now I feel I am learning as much or more here on the Point, and that while you take your courses in town and prepare to venture off to your new task as the Teacher in Elliston, I too am Embarking on a new Venture, no less fraught with Danger and Possibility than yours. You know how I hold you in my heart and in prayers – oh that you would do the same for me, even though you do not share my Beliefs!
At the end of September, a Seventh-day Adventist preacher from St. John’s comes out to Bay Roberts once a week to hold meetings, to reap what Brother Anderson and Brother Pierce have sown over the summer months. Aunt Rachel says she won’t have Triffie going to the meetings, but Triffie simply says she must obey God rather than men, finishes her day’s work, puts on her hat and gloves, and walks across the causeway to Bay Roberts.
The meetings are held on Sunday nights, and the first two Sundays Trif talks Sadie Parsons into coming with her. Of the girls her age, Sadie is her closest friend now that Kit is gone. Sadie is by no means a soulmate; she is a pleasant, silly girl, not overly bright but with a thin veneer of sophistication due to the fact that her uncle runs the Mercantile and her father is captain of a schooner. There was talk when Sadie finished school that she might go on to college in St. John’s, as her brother Ted did, but once she wrote her examinations no more was said about that. She is Kit’s cousin, and used to be best pals with Millicent Butler, but with Millie in service in Harbour Grace, Sadie is, like Trif, at a bit of a loose end. They are thrown together, friends more by chance than by choice.
Sadie showed no interest in the prophecy books Trif was reading, but the week before the meetings started, word came to the Point that Skipper Wilf Parsons’ schooner, the Eliza May, lost two of her boats in a storm on the Labrador. The Eliza May is full of men from the Point – Trif’s Uncle Albert is on her, and most of the young fellows including Jacob John Russell and Sadie’s beau Jabez Badcock. The possibility that their men may have been lost paralyzes the women of the Point as they wait for news, and Sadie is driven to her knees to beg the Lord to spare Jabez’s life. When Triffie suggests the Adventist meetings as a possible way to seek God’s will, she comes along readily enough.
The visiting preacher lectures in a dry tone untouched by any hint of revival fervour. He talks about the end of the world the way a merchant might talk about the price of fish. Many curious people press in on the first night, but after hearing discourses on the year-day principle and the twenty-three-hundred day prophecy, many of them stop coming. They say it’s because they’ve been convinced the Seventh-day Adventists are in error, but Triffie thinks it’s because they had hoped for something more impressive – fire and brimstone preaching, perhaps. The coloured posters of the beasts of Daniel and Revelation are bizarre enough to lure a few people in, but sometime during the discussion of the Roman emperor Constantine and his nefarious plot to change Sabbath to Sunday, they drift away.
What little fire and brimstone is to be found at the Seventh-day meetings comes from the lips of young Brother Anderson, who does not preach but often gives the closing prayer. Now that one will be a powerful preacher someday, Triffie thinks; he has told her he is studying at college to become a minister back in the States. He and Brother Pierce go around to the homes of the few people still faithfully attending the meetings, holding Bible studies on the evenings there are no services. His prayers are condensed altar calls, urging God to act upon the listening hearts, drawing them out of Babylon and into His remnant people now – now, while there is yet time and hope, before probation ends and He comes to judge the earth.
In the middle of October comes the welcome news that all the men from the Eliza May made it safely to shore and are bound home. Soon after, the survivors themselves arrive. Some, the storytellers and braggarts, are eager to tell the tale. More taciturn men, like Uncle Albert, only say, “’Tis good to be home.” Jacob John Russell comes up to Triffie on the dock where everyone has gathered to welcome the crew and stands in front of her with his hands in his pockets, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet with a foolish grin on his face.
“What do you want?” she says.
“I might’ve died, Trif. Is it too much to ask you’d be glad to see me alive?”
“I’m glad you’re not drowned. Now go on, and don’t make a nuisance of yourself.”
That Sunday afternoon, Sadie tells Trif she can’t come to the Adventist preaching service with her anymore. “Jabez don’t want me to,” she says. Jabez is a strikingly handsome young man a few years older than Sadie and Trif, a staunch Methodist, who since his return from the Labrador, has been heard saying he means to become a minister now. “He says God saved his life for a purpose and he’s going to dedicate himself to the Lord, and he don’t want me being led astray by no false doctrines before we gets married,” Sadie explains.
Triffie goes alone that night, walking over the causeway with the other young people who are heading, as she once did, to the Salvation Army, then going her own way to the rented hall where the Adventists hold their meetings.
When the service is over she steps outside to find Jacob John Russell, of all people, stood up leaning against the wall. “What are you doing here?” she asks, when he falls into step beside her.
“Walking you home.”
“I’m after telling you a dozen times I don’t need you walking me home.”
“You told me that back in the spring when we were walking home from the Army,” he points out. “Fair enough – there’s plenty of other people coming back along the road when Salvation Meeting lets out. But there’s not another soul on the Point coming across to these fool meetings, and I won’t have you walking back over the causeway on your own in the dark.”
“What business is it of yours?”
“It’s my business if I make it mine. I knows now you’d rather have that fellow Anderson walking you home, but I don’t see him trudging over the causeway to bring you back to the Point.”
“You think I got my eye on him, is that it? I suppose you’d be glad to know he’s got a fiancée waiting for him back in the States.”
“Is that so, now? And when did you find that out?”
“A nice while back.” In fact, it was only last week that Brother Anderson mentioned the saintly Louisa, the lovely young girl who is studying to be a nurse back at the Seventh-day Adventist College in Battle Creek. When he returns from his missionary work in Newfoundland they plan to be married. Triffie will not confess – not to Kit, not to God, and certainly not to Jacob John Russell – that her heart fell a little at this news. Perhaps she had dreams – but no. Those were only fantasies. And with the end times approaching, she has more serious matters on her mind than catching the eye of a handsome young American missionary, and going back with him to Battle Creek.
“And you’re still going to those meetings, even though the young missionary’s spoken for?” Jacob John taunts.
“I wouldn’t expect the likes of you to understand. There are some people in this world got more serious matters on their mind than courting and marrying.”
“Tell me then, Triffie. What’s more important than courting and marrying? Queer old pictures of buckhorned goats and flying angels? Is that worth traipsing over the causeway
twice a week and turning everyone on the Point against you?”
“I don’t mind being persecuted for the truth,” Trif says. But she thinks of those words – turning everyone against her, or her own words about planting herself crosswise to the whole town. Is she willing to stand out, to be one of the handful of people baptized when the evangelistic meetings are finished? To worship on Saturday, forswear eating salt pork and cooking with lard, dig a chasm of difference between herself and all those she knows and loves? If she is one of the remnant, she and Kit will be forever on opposite sides of a great gulf, unless Triffie can somehow win her to the truth. Trif knows in her heart that’s a long shot.
“Time for you to give up this foolishness, think about settling down, getting married, now, ain’t it?”
She stops short in mid-stride, turns to face him. Jacob John is as brazen as brass, but even so she didn’t expect him to be as forward as this. “What did you say?”
“Only that it was high time you thought of getting married, that’s all.”
“I’m not even seventeen. I’ll think of it when I’m good and ready,” Trif says. “You got some gall.” He’s always had gall, of course, but where Jabez Badcock, Sadie’s young man, came back from the near-disaster on the Eliza May with a sober conviction that God had a holy purpose for his life, Jacob John Russell has come strutting back like the cock of the walk, sure he was leading a charmed life and that fate would hand him whatever he wanted – even Triffie Bradbury.
“You watch yourself, Jacob John,” she warns. “I’ll tell my uncle you’re taking liberties.”
“I’ll tell him myself I’m ready to take any liberties offered,” says Jacob John. He walks on beside her, not chastened at all, over the causeway and up the North Side Road as far as the front gate of Uncle Albert and Aunt Rachel’s house. When her hand is on the gate to swing it open, he says, “I got me own house.”
“You do not – you lives with your mother.”
“Yes, but before Father died he put the house in my name. It’s mine when I gets married or turns twenty-one. Mother says when I marries, she’s going over to Bay Roberts with Liza and Joe. So I got me own house.” Liza is his older sister; there are also two younger brothers, not fortunate enough to inherit a house.
“I don’t know why you thinks I’d care about the likes of you and your house,” Triffie says, and goes up the walk to the front bridge, careful not to give a backward glance.
She knows the house. It’s a fine sturdy old house, built by Jacob John’s grandfather fifty years ago. It sits on the south side of the Point, right at the head of the Long Beach, looking out over the beach and the bay at Bareneed across the water.
Trif walks into her uncle and aunt’s house, this house where she will never be more than the unpaid help, the poor relation. I got me own house. She tries not to dwell on Jacob John’s words, for what good can come of it?
A house of one’s own, even the promise of one, is not enough. She sets her face against Jacob John and his patient efforts at courting. In my Father’s house are many mansions, she recites to herself as she goes about the round of her daily work, digging up the potatoes and turnips she weeded all summer, preparing for winter. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come again and receive you unto Myself. The end times are coming, and it’s no time to be thinking of marrying or giving in marriage, even if she were so inclined. She tells the minister she wants to be baptized when the meetings are finished. If she has to trust someone to help her escape her life on the Point, it’s going to be Jesus, not Jacob John Russell.
Kit
Elliston
October, 1907
My Darling Posy,
How strange your letter seems to me! As strange as those books and charts of prophecy that you write of, as if it comes from another land or another time. I know you have always felt closer to the Throne of God than I could do, but to imagine you being entranced by these Strange Doctrines, being – I want to write “Taken In” but it is impossible to me, dearest Posy, that a mind as clear and sharp as yours could be ever Taken In by any charlatan or deceiver.
You are right, of course, there is a great gulf fixed between us if you truly believe the end of all things is near, while I think that the world will go on much as it always has. And yet, forever and ever, world without end you will always be my dearest friend and companion, nothing shall change that. Change everything, dear one, but not your love for me!
I suppose I ought to write about my own new Voyage of Discovery, here in Elliston. The school here is not bursting at the seams like ours at home, but has upwards of forty students on the books, of whom about twenty-five attend on a regular basis, with the others coming and going more or less as they please. There is the usual mixture of bright children, dullards and all in between. I have one boy preparing to write Standard Six examinations, the oldest boy left in school once all his fellows have gone fishing. His father, who is Captain of a Schooner with one older boy already gone to college, has great hopes of sending the lad to school in St. John’s, but it will take a deal of work to get him ready to occupy such a place.
I am busy from dawn till long past dusk, sitting up in my boardinghouse room muffled in blankets and gloves making plans for my classes. Yet the greatest burden comes not from the teaching itself, but from all the things the community expects of its Teacher. I promise, I had not considered how heavy my duties might be…
It’s ironic, Kit thinks, that just as Triffie plunges ever deeper into the mysteries of holiness, Kit, who barely knows what she believes, finds herself expected to be a pillar in the Church. It’s not enough that she teaches the children five days a week at school; she is expected to be the girls’ Sunday School teacher as well. It is assumed that she will take an active role in the Church of England Women’s Association: the minister’s wife runs it, but latches onto Kit and enlists her help.
Mrs. Chaulk, her landlady, has expectations of the new teacher as well. Kit pays for room and board out of her wages, but has been told that the greatly reduced rate assumes she will take her turn at cooking and cleaning. As Mrs. Chaulk cannot read or write, Kit also reads her letters and writes the replies Mrs. Chaulk dictates. She reads three chapters of the Bible aloud for her landlady before bed: “yourself being an educated girl and all.”
Kit does everything she’s asked. What would it mean, if the teacher put her foot down and refused to teach Sunday School, or help plan church women’s meetings? Or, for that matter, if she refused to cook and scrub and read the Psalms to her landlady? She is determined to give no-one in Elliston any cause for complaint: she will be a model teacher, a paragon. When she is gone from here, they will shake their heads and say, “We never had a teacher so good as Miss Saunders, not before nor since.”
She rises before dawn to go down and light the kitchen fire and cook porridge for her own breakfast and Mrs. Chaulk’s, then packs herself a lunch so she can stay at school and work through dinnertime. She opens up the school an hour before the children come, and sometimes starts the stove herself, if the big boys don’t come early with wood.
Then the dizzying reality of the school day sweeps over her, balancing the various classes and subjects, trying to give enough time to everyone while keeping order at the same time. Despite the anger that surges inside her whenever she thinks of Joe Bishop or recalls his name, she can’t help calling on him as an example. His work is more relevant than that of Miss Shaw or any of her other Spencer teachers, who had the luxury of teaching a single subject at a time to groups of eager scholars.
Winter closes in. The ground turns to stone beneath her boots. Kit rises in the dark in order to get to school, to have the stove going early enough to drive the chill from the room.
One morning she climbs the hill leading up to the school and sees a tall figure leaning against the schoolhouse wall. She hesitates. She is a woman alone on a dark road. Would anyone dare lay a hand on the school teacher?
The figure steps forward:
a man, tall and broad shouldered, carrying an armload of wood.
“I’d take off my cap, but my hands are full,” he apologizes, “and I can’t hold the door open for you neither.” He speaks with a Bonavista Bay accent but his speech is careful, as if he’s used to choosing words to impress people far from here. “Father told me the new schoolteacher was a woman so I thought you might want a hand laying the fire,” he adds, following her into the schoolroom.
Inside, she lights a lamp while the stranger carries his load of wood to the stove. Crouched in front of the stove door, he doesn’t speak again till he has a flame going.
“I’m Ben Porter, by the way,” he says. “Harry and Maud’s boy.”
“Oh, of course,” Kit says. If it weren’t so early, if he hadn’t startled her by appearing in the dark like that, she would surely have had the wits to guess. She knows Harold and Maud Porter’s eldest son is their pride and joy, the boy who went through school in St. John’s and then on to university up in Nova Scotia, studying to be a lawyer or doctor or something grand. For a man like Harold Porter, skipper of a fishing boat, this is a lofty height for his son to soar to. Captain Porter’s second son, Lije, has no inclination for further schooling and is already a crewman on the Clyde, but Harold Porter has told Kit he hopes the younger boy, Sam, will follow in Ben’s footsteps. Sam is Kit’s senior student this year, the boy struggling his way through the Third Reader while sailing through his Mathematics.
“You’re home for Christmas, I suppose,” she says to Ben Porter.
That Forgetful Shore Page 7