Читать книгу David Fleming's Forgiveness - Margaret M. Robertson - Страница 4

There were already a good many openings in the North Gore woods when the Flemings took possession of the partially cleared farm lying half-way between it and the village, at a little distance from the road. They built on it a house of grey, unhewn stone, long and low like the home they had “left on the other side of the sea.” They called the place Ythan Brae, and the clear shallow brook that ran down from their rocky pastures, through the swamp to Beaver River, they called the Ythan Burn because the familiar names were pleasant on their lips and in their ears in a strange land; but it was a long time before it seemed like home to them.

For a while the neighbours knew about them only what could be learned from the fields visible from the North Gore road. That Mr. Fleming had experience, tireless industry, and some money, three things to insure success in his calling, the canny Scotch farmers were not slow to perceive in the change that gradually came over the once-neglected land. Mr. Fleming seemed a grave, silent man, with the traces of some severe trouble showing in his face. And this trouble his wife had shared, for, though she was still a young woman when she came to Gershom, there were streaks of white in her brown hair, and on her fair, serene face there was the look which “tells of sorrow meekly borne.” The gloom and sternness which sometimes made people shrink from coming in contact with her husband was never seen in her.

The eldest of their two sons was almost a man when they came to live at Ythan Brae. He was a quiet, well-doing lad, reserved like his father, but pleasant-spoken and friendly like his mother. His brother Hugh had inherited his mother’s good looks and sunny temper, and he had, besides, the power which does not always accompany the possession of personal beauty or cleverness—the power of winning love.

Long afterward, when the mention of Hugh’s name was a sorrowful matter, the people of the North Gore who knew him best used to speak of him with a kind of wonder. He was such “a bonny laddie,” with eyes like stars, and even at sixteen a head above his elder brother. He was so blithe and kindly, and clever too. According to these people there was nothing he could not do, and nothing that he would not trouble himself to do to give pleasure to his friends. He was “the apple of his father’s eye,” the delight of his life; and that his mother’s heart did not break when she lost him, was only because, even at the worst of times, God’s grace is sufficient for help and healing to those who stay themselves on Him.

For Hugh “went wrong.” Oh, sorrowful words! seeming so little and meaning so much: care and fear, watching and waiting, sleepless nights and days of dread to those who looked on with no power to bring him back again. How he went wrong may be easily guessed. He had been led astray by evil companions his mother always said. Not that to her knowledge, or to the knowledge of any one, he had gone so very far astray till the end came. There had been doubts and fears for him, and earnest expostulations from those who loved him, but it was a great shock and surprise to all the countryside when it came to be known that he had gone away never to return.

What he had done was certainly known only to two or three. There were whispers of forgery, and even robbery, and some said it was only debt, which his father refused to pay. There were others involved in the matter, and it was kept quiet. Some of the young Holts were among the number. Jacob, Gershom’s eldest son, went away for a while. It was not known whether they had gone together, but Jacob soon came home again, and as far as he was concerned, everything was as before.

But after a time there came heavy tidings to Ythan Brae. Hugh Fleming was dead—in the very flower of his youth—“with all his sins on his head;” his father cried out in the agony of the knowledge. There was only a word or two in a strange handwriting to say that, after sharp and sudden illness, he had died among strangers.

The father and mother lived through the time that followed. How they lived none knew, for they were alone at the Brae. They never passed the bounds of their own farm through all that terrible winter, and the neighbours, who sometimes went to see them, as a general thing only saw Mrs. Fleming. She stood between her husband and the sorrowful curiosity, the real but painful sympathy which he could not have borne—which even she found it so hard to bear. Neither then, nor in all the years that followed, did any one but his boy’s mother hear him utter his boy’s name. They lived through it, but that winter was like the “valley of the shadow of death” to them both.

When spring came, the worst was over, the neighbours said, and in one way so it was. Their son James brought his wife home to live with them, and they settled down to their changed life, making the best of it. Mrs. Fleming’s cheerfulness came back in the midst of many cares, for her son’s wife was a delicate woman, and the little children came fast to their home. Mrs. Fleming governed the household still, and in a sense began life anew in their midst.

But after his son came to live with them, Mr. Fleming gave up to him all that part of their affairs that would have taken him away from home. He was a born farmer; his forefathers had been farmers for as many generations as he could trace, and he had a hereditary reverence for mother earth as the giver of bread to man. He took pleasure in the work of the farm, labouring patiently and cheerfully to bring it to the highest productiveness which the soil and the variable Canadian climate would permit. Hollows were filled and heights were levelled, and the wide stretch of lowland on either side of the Burn near its mouth, was year by year made to yield. A road or two to be cleared and drained and tilled, and one might have travelled a summer day through the fine farming country without seeing a finer farm than he made it at last.

And all this time the farm, with his interest in it and his labour on it, was doing a good work for him, and he grew to love the place as his home, and the home of the little children who were growing up about him.

But just as a tranquil gloaming seemed to be closing over their changeful day of life, a new and heavy sorrow fell upon them. Their son James died, and the two old people found themselves left alone to care for his delicate widow and her fatherless children. Other troubles followed closely on this. James Fleming had never been a worldly-wise man, and he died in debt. Some of the claims were just, some of them were doubtful, none of them could have held against his father. But the old man gave not a moment’s hearing to those who made this suggestion. The honour of his son’s name and memory was at stake, and in his haste and eagerness to settle all, and because he had so fallen out of business ways, the best and wisest plans were not taken in the arrangement of his affairs.

When the time of settlement came, it was found that most of the claims against James Fleming had passed into the hands of the Holts. It was Jacob alone who was to be dealt with, for his father was an old man, and his connection with the business had long been merely nominal. Jacob Holt had changed since the days when he had been, as Hugh Fleming’s father firmly believed, the ruin of his son. He had changed from an ill-doing, idle lad, into a man, noted even in that busy community for his attention to business, a man who took pains to seek a fair reputation for honesty and generosity among his fellow-townsmen. But Mr. Fleming liked the man as little as he had liked the lad, and it added much to the misery of his indebtedness that his obligation was to him. He was growing an old man, conscious of his increasing weakness and inability to cope with difficulties, and he believed his “enemy,” as he called him, to be capable of taking advantage of these. His faith failed him sometimes, and in his anxiety and unhappiness, he uttered harder words than he knew.

Everybody in Gershom knew of his debt, but no one knew what made the bitterness of his indebtedness to the old man. The part which Jacob Holt had had in the trouble, that had come on him through his son, had never been clearly understood, and was now well-nigh forgotten in the place. But the father had not forgotten it. He would gladly have mortgaged his farm, or even have given up half of it altogether, to any friend who could have advanced him the money to pay his debt, but no such friend was at hand, and it ended, as all knew it must end, in a seven years’ mortgage being taken by Jacob Holt, and the only thing the old man could do now was to keep silence and hope for better days.

The little Flemings were growing up healthy and happy, a great comfort and a great care to their grandparents. They were bright and pretty children, and good children on the whole, the neighbours said, and they said also, that there seemed to be no reason why the last days of the old people should not be contented and comfortable, notwithstanding their burden of debt. For the Holts would never be hard on such old neighbours, and as the boys grew up, to take the weight of the farm-work on them, the debt might be paid, and all would go well. This was the hopeful view of the matter taken by Mrs. Fleming also, but the old man always listened in silence to such words.

When five years had past, no part of the debt had yet been paid. Even the interest had been in part paid with borrowed money, and there were other signs and tokens that the Flemings were going back in the world. It was not to be wondered at; for Mr. Fleming was an old man, and the greater part of the farm-work had to be done by hired help, at a cost which the farm could ill bear. And the chances were, that for a while at least the state of affairs would be worse rather than better.

Then there came to Mr. Fleming this proposal from Jacob Holt. If twenty-five acres of the swampy land that bordered the Beaver River just where the brook fell into it were given up to him the mortgage should be cancelled, and the debt should be considered paid. He declared that the proposal was made solely in the interest of the Fleming family, and there were a good many people in Gershom who believed him.

To this proposal, however, Mr. Fleming returned a prompt and brief refusal. He said little about it, but it was known that he believed evil of Jacob Holt with regard to the matter, and though he kept silence, others spoke. The North Gore people took the matter up, and so did the people of the village. Mr. Fleming had friends in both sections of the town, and some of them did not spare hard words in the discussion.

Jacob Holt was now the rich man of Gershom, one of the chief supporters of the church and of every good cause encouraged in the town, and all this did not promise well for the union in church matters so earnestly desired by many good people in Gershom.