Part 14 (1/2)
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.