“I see.” Another paused lapsed, and then, “Do you think Vicar Phelps will ever change his mind and allow me to see her?”
“I believe anything is possible, Mr. Raleigh. You’ll just have to continue being patient.”
“I’m learning that patience is a hard schoolmaster, Mrs. Hollis.”
She gave him a little smile. “But the prize is worth it, yes?”
His tone softening, he replied, “Very much worth it.”
“You had Jonathan Raleigh over for dinner?” Andrew asked, incredulous, the next morning over their cups of tea, which the nip of the air had caused him and Julia to take in the Larkspur’s library with the door open a propriety-approving foot or so.
“He’s my children’s schoolmaster, Andrew,” his fiancée reminded him, with no trace of repentance in her voice. “How long are you going to carry this grudge against him?”
The tea in Andrew’s cup suddenly tasted bitter. He had gone through the latter part of the summer like a man who has inherited the world. Betrothed to the most beautiful, gracious woman in England, he had happily settled into village life and was living in harmony with his daughters in the vicarage. How long had he been allowed such bliss before Jonathan Raleigh decided to put an end to it. Six weeks?
“You don’t understand. It’s my daughter he treated so despicably.”
“I do understand.” She leaned forward to rest a soft hand upon the back of his. “But everyone is someone’s daughter or son, Andrew. Should there be no forgiveness for anyone, then?”
“It’s not a matter of forgiveness,” he maintained adamantly. “It’s a matter of not wanting to risk the same thing happening again.”
“Life involves risk, dear. My late husband had an impeccable reputation, yet he betrayed his family.”
As cynical as he sometimes was about human behavior, Andrew still could not understand how Doctor Philip Hollis, with such a wonderful family, could have given gambling first place in his heart. Andrew had to ask God’s forgiveness more than once for having the guilty thought that he was glad the man had died. He was in danger of thinking it again if he did not return to the subject at hand, so he asked Julia, “What are you suggesting? That I should allow him to court her?”
“Not if you’re not ready.” She patted his hand as if he were a little child. In his present mood he should have minded, but he did not.
He wondered if she understood her power over him. She could render him silly with worry just by frowning.
“But I wish you would suspend judgment and allow Mr. Raleigh some more time to prove himself,” Julia went on, her green eyes shining as he brought her hand up to his lips.
His heart told him that it was a reasonable request and that as a Christian he was expected to do no less. “Very well, Julia. We’ll give him some time.”
The strike of half-past eight signaled it was time to leave for the school, where he would see the subject of their discussion soon enough. He drained his tea, bitter or not, and, with a glance at the door, coaxed her into a kiss. He would have stayed long enough for another, but she reminded him that it was not a good example for the vicar to be late for Monday chapel.
At the schoolhouse door he paused to listen. A curious absence of pandemonium greeted his ears. He opened the door to find thirty-two faces trained upon their schoolmaster, who was in the process of reading aloud from something Andrew knew he should have easily recognized, but the calm of the classroom had befuddled his mind.
“ ‘I am glad, my brother, that thou didst withstand this villain so bravely; for of all, as thou sayest, I think he has the wrong name.…’ ”
Mr. Raleigh glanced up at him and stopped reading. “Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning, Mr. Raleigh.” Andrew nodded at the students. “Young men and young ladies.”
“Good morning, Vicar Phelps,” they returned politely. Even the Sanders boy, who had stuck his tongue out at him just a week ago as their wagon passed him on Market Lane, joined in the greeting.
“We were just enjoying a little of The Pilgrim’s Progress,” Mr. Raleigh said. “We read a chapter from it every day now.”
In spite of his promise to Julia, it vexed Andrew slightly that the young man had known something that he himself—even temporarily—had forgotten. But he covered it with a smile and said, “What a splendid idea.”
The smile seemed to take Mr. Raleigh completely by surprise, for a dazed look came over him. Andrew did not know how long it took him to recover, for having felt he had gone far beyond the extra mile, he turned to the students again and opened his Bible.
Chapter 36
Mornings in the dormitories of the Josiah Smith Academy were becoming uncomfortably cold as the term advanced. Philip strongly suspected economic factors were behind this. Why warm up two whole floors in the mornings when the students were only allowed a half hour to make themselves presentable for their classes and would not return to those same rooms until afternoon? Perhaps he would have agreed with such a measure had he been an adult, but when his cold bare feet fumbled on the frigid floor for his slippers of mornings late, he found himself wishing he could send Mr. Houghton, the headmaster, for laps around the grounds.
After Westbrook had barked orders to “rise and shine” on Tuesday morning, Philip surrendered the warmth of his blankets and threw his feet over the side of his bed, mentally preparing himself for the meeting of warm feet and cold floor. But he was not prepared for the puddle of water. He was about to launch himself back into his bed and under his covers when another sense revealed to him that it was not plain water in which he stood. “Ugh!” he cried disgustingly, jumping out to the corridor between the rows of beds.
Other boys stopped grumbling about the cold, some coming over for a look and a snicker. “Watch out,” Philip warned Milton Hayes in the next bed. Hayes sat up in bed and grimaced.
“You couldn’t wait, Hollis?” jeered someone whom Philip saw fit to ignore.
“I thought I heard Whitby in here last night,” Hayes said with an eye toward the lavatory door, behind which Westbrook had disappeared. “But I didn’t know they’d done that. I’m sorry about your feet.”
Philip rubbed his feet on the dry part of the floor while waiting for Westbrook to emerge so that he could show the monitor what happened and, more likely than not, be blamed for it. “Whitby has had it in for Patterson and me ever since—” Mention of his friend’s name filled him with a sudden panic. “Gabriel!” he called, running down the corridor between the beds. He was halfway to his friend’s bed when there was an awful loud thumping sound and a much worse sharp groan. Westbrook burst from the lavatory at the other end, his face half lathered, and several boys ran to the scene.
As he had feared, Gabriel lay in a puddle in the space between two beds. “Are you all right?” Philip asked, bending to give him a hand. But Gabriel groaned again and shook his head.
“I can’t move my arm, Philip.”
“Don’t tell me the whale got beached,” Westbrook said sarcastically as he came closer, ordering the boys aside. Philip flung a scathing look at him.
“His arm’s probably broken, Westbrook.”
That wiped the sneer from the prefect’s face. “Go get some help!” he yelled to no one in particular. Three boys scrambled for the door. In the turmoil that followed, Mr. Archer arrived with other housemasters, who carried Gabriel away on a stretcher. When Philip attempted to see his friend after classes were over, he was refused admission to the small infirmary by a stone-faced nurse. A broken arm was all the information she would give him.
The next day Gabriel Patterson was on his way back to Birmingham. We didn’t even exchange addresses, Philip thought sadly as he passed the empty bed the next evening.
On the eighth of October, early morning thunderstorms assailed Gresham again. Jonathan rose from his bed, found his slippers, and padded, bleary eyed, to the window. Rivulets of water ran down the glass, making Y patterns as they joined other rivulets. They’ll
be disappointed. Even if the rain stops soon, it likely won’t dry up enough by recess to set up the target.
It was only then that he remembered what day of the week it was. Saturday. And oddly enough, he felt a small stab of disappointment.
At least the butcher’s cart won’t be able to come, Seth thought, staring out at the rain from his open doorway. Nettle Lane would be too muddy for wagon wheels in such a deluge. Yet he had gone to the door three times during the past half hour, for what reason he was not sure. He was about to close the door again when he saw something looming above the drystone wall between his barnyard and the lane. It was moving toward his drive, and after staring at it through the rain for another second or two, he recognized it as an umbrella.
That can’t be her! he told himself, yet he knew without a doubt that it was. How could he have imagined that the same bashful-looking woman who sang so sweetly before the church could possess such tenacity! With a sigh, he took up his own umbrella from an old churn crock near the door.
“I’ll be back,” Seth called to Thomas, who lay in front of the fire practicing his penmanship on his slate, his elbows propping him up in the front and his ankles crossed up in the air above his knees.
“Is it her?” he asked hopefully.
“It’s her,” Seth replied before stepping outside. She looked a sight with the umbrella over her shoulder, basket in one hand, and another bunching her skirts just above the ankles. There was no use attempting to talk in the downpour, and he certainly could not order her to turn around and go back, so he took the basket from her and accompanied her to the cottage.
Thomas, having temporarily abandoned his homework, held the door open and took their umbrellas as they entered.
“Hello, Miss Sanders!” the boy piped while their visitor took off a pair of oversized and surprisingly mudless men’s boots and left them on the rag rug just inside the door. It appeared that she intended to go shoeless, with just the thick wool socks on her feet, until time to leave. In spite of her umbrella and bonnet, which she also removed to hang on the doorknob, several damp ringlets formed about her face.
“Good day to you, Thomas,” she replied with an affectionate smile.
Seth found her kindness grossly unfair, because it would have warmed the heart of any boy on the receiving end. “I see that you’ve lessons to do today too?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He ran to scoop up his slate and brought it back to show her the rows of apple, bear, and candle he had written as well as chalk would allow. “I’m learning script now.”
“Why, that’s fine work,” she told him, eliciting a radiant grin from Thomas.
I told him the same thing not more than an hour ago! Seth thought. While the boy had smiled, he had not glowed, as he was doing now. “Miss Sanders, why didn’t you stay home today?” he asked, barely able to keep the irritation from his voice. “The weather and all,” he added lamely when she turned her hazel eyes to him.
She had the audacity to change the subject, explaining that she had walked on the grasses near the wall to keep her brother’s boots from getting caked with mud. “I’m afraid it’s just going to be vegetable soup today,” she said, nodding toward the basket that sat on the floor now. “But I did bake some barley cakes this morning that will go nicely with it.”
“Fine,” Seth snapped, for he had no other choice. He returned to his chair and picked up the well-worn copy of A Tale of Two Cities on loan from the lending library. To add insult to injury, Thomas asked if he could take his slate in the kitchen and finish his homework at the table. “Fine,” he snapped again.
He attempted to become absorbed again with the story, especially with reading time being so hard to come by. But his effort was thwarted by sounds of occasional clinks of dishes and conversation coming from the kitchen. It was not that they were too loud. On the contrary, they were too soft for him to tell what was going on without straining his ears. Finally he gave up and closed his book, making note of the page he had attempted about three times to read. He walked into the kitchen, pausing just inside to view the scene at the table with wonder. Thomas sat on his knees in one chair, his young face screwed up in concentration as he used his chalk. Miss Sanders, in the chair across from him, had in her lap what appeared to be a kitchen curtain and was pulling a needle and thread through it. She looked up at him and blushed a little.
“I noticed this tear last week,” she said, raising the cloth a bit to show him. “I hope you don’t mind my taking the liberty of mending it.”
Bemused that she would concern herself about taking liberties when she already barged in on his life every Saturday, he replied softly, for the sake of the boy, “Would it matter if I did, Miss Sanders?”
“It would matter, Mr. Langford.”
“But that wouldn’t stop you, would it?” he could not resist asking.
“I suppose not,” she answered frankly, then returned her attention to her mending.
Four more times, Seth consoled himself, purposely ignoring the savory aroma of the soup bubbling on the stove.
“It’s so good to see you up and around!” Julia said to Miss Clark upon meeting her just outside the lending library early Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s good to be up and around,” Miss Clark smiled, switching a book into her left hand so that she could take Julia’s hand with her right. “Doctor Rhodes advised that a daily walk would be good medicine.”
Indeed, the advice seemed to be working, for there were bright spots of color in her cheeks. But then Julia wondered how much October’s nippy wind had to do with it, for the schoolmistress still seemed much too frail. “Why don’t you come back to the Larkspur with me and have some tea? You have to go home that way anyway.”
“That sounds lovely, thank you.” Ten minutes later, they sat in the hall and had ginger biscuits with their cups of tea. “Have your daughters not arrived from school yet?” Miss Clark asked.
“Mr. Raleigh has asked the children if they would be willing to stay another hour every school day for archery practice,” Julia replied. “So many have to help on their parents’ farms on Saturdays. And Grace asked to stay and watch Aleda practice.”
“I see.” Miss Clark raised her cup for another sip, but her forehead seemed knotted in thought.
Julia kicked herself mentally for bringing up the archery team, when it was obvious that Miss Clark was longing to assume the role of schoolmistress again. But what other answer could she have given but the truth? “Is something wrong?” she felt compelled to ask.
Miss Clark lowered her cup and smiled, softening the angular facial lines her illness had produced. “Are you wondering if I mind that the students are so enthusiastic about Mr. Raleigh?”
Julia would not have stated it that bluntly, but she had to reply in the affirmative.
“Not at all, Mrs. Hollis. In fact, I think it’s wonderful. Yet of course I don’t relish the idea of replacing someone who has sparked such a collective interest in them.”
“They’re going to love you, too, Miss Clark.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted with a doubtful sigh. “I’m aware that Mr. Raleigh had some difficulty with some of the boys until he introduced the archery. Discipline was never an issue at Saint Margaret’s. In spite of Doctor Rhodes’ assurance that I’ll be strong enough to teach in another three weeks, I have delayed notifying the board. I know nothing about archery, Mrs. Hollis, and wonder if I’ll have the strength to maintain order in a class that size without such an incentive.”
Recalling Andrew’s description of the chaos he had witnessed on his previous Monday visits, Julia wondered as well. Perhaps if she were a man with the commanding presence Captain Powell had possessed, and not such a soft-spoken woman, her lack of knowledge regarding archery would not be a concern.
Presently her guest’s voice pierced her thoughts. “You know, I do appreciate you having me over,” she smiled gratefully. “It helps to discuss this with someone other than my parents. They’re of the mind th
at I should take the whole year off.”
“Are you considering it?” Julia had a feeling Mr. Raleigh would be happy for an excuse to stay longer and try to win Elizabeth’s affection, but it was Miss Clark’s wishes that had to be honored first. She was the one who had left Scotland because she was assured a position by the school board, while Mr. Raleigh’s tenure was never supposed to last any longer than a month or so.
“Or at least waiting until after the tournament. That’s in only a little less than six weeks. Teaching is the joy of my life, Mrs. Hollis, and I am eager to resume it, but there are the children to consider.”
“Are you aware that Luke Smith has started attending the practices after school in the eventuality that Mr. Raleigh would have to give up the position before the tournament? So you wouldn’t be taking that away from them.”
Miss Clark gave her a sad smile. “The way I hear it, Mr. Raleigh inspires them. They’ve formed a team with their schoolmaster, and I cannot in good conscience destroy that now.”
Shortly afterward Miss Clark left, with Julia accompanying her as far as the end of the courtyard. As they wished each other farewell, Julia did so almost distractedly, for the seed of an idea had been planted in her mind.
She spoke with Andrew about it two days later, in the library again, after giving the idea time to grow and bathing it in prayer.
“A secondary school?” he asked with raised eyebrows. “Here in Gresham?”
“Why not? Have you spoken with Ben Mayhew lately? He’s dying to continue his education. His father would agree to it if it were free. No doubt there are others as well.”
“My dear, it’s a worthy idea,” Andrew told her. He nodded thoughtfully. “A very worthy idea. But to hear the board tell it, finances are strained to the limit to maintain the grammar school. From whence would come the support? And what about a building?”
The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter Page 42