Chapter VI: The School Mistress

The setting sun of a raw January afternoon was shining into the dingy school-room where Maude sat by the iron-rusted box stove, with her feet on the hearth, reading a note which had been brought to her just before the close of school by a man who had been to the postoffice in the village at the foot of the lake. It was nearly four months since she first crossed the threshold of the log school-house, taking in at a glance the whole dreariness of her surroundings, and feeling for the moment that she could not endure it. But she was somewhat accustomed to it now, and not half so much afraid of the tall girls and boys, her scholars, as she had been at first, while the latter were wholly devoted to her and not a little proud of their “young school ma’am,” as they called her. Everybody was kind to her, and she had not found “boarding round” so very dreadful after all, for the fatted calf was always killed for her, and the best dishes brought out, while it was seldom that she was called upon to share her sleeping-room with more than one member of the family. And still there was ever present with her a longing for her mother and for Johnnie and a life more congenial to her tastes. Dreaming was out of the question now, and the book which was to make her famous and buy back the old home seemed very far in the future. Just how large a portion of her thoughts was given to Max Gordon it was difficult to say. She had felt a thrill of joy when she saw him in church, and a little proud, too, it may be, of his notice of her. Very minutely her cousins had questioned her with regard to her acquaintance with him, deploring her stupidity in not having ascertained who he was. A relative, most likely, of Miss Raynor, in whose pew he sat, they concluded, and they told their cousin of the lady at the Cedars, Grace Raynor, who could not walk a step, but was wheeled in a chair, sometimes by a maid and sometimes by a man. The lady _par excellence_ of the neighborhood she seemed to be, and Maude found herself greatly interested in her and in everything pertaining to her. Twice she had been through the grounds, which were open to the public, and had seen Grace both times in the distance, once sitting in her chair upon the piazza, and once being wheeled in the woods by her man-servant, Tom. But beyond this she had not advanced, and nothing could be farther from her thoughts than the idea that she would ever be anything to the lady of the Cedars. Max Gordon’s letter had been forwarded to her from Merrivale, but had created no suspicion in her mind that he and her friend of the train were one. She had thought it a little strange that he should have been in Canandaigua the very day that she arrived there, and wished she might have seen him, but the truth never dawned upon her until some time in December, when her mother wrote to her that he had called to see them, expressing much regret at Maude’s absence, and when told where she was and when she went, exclaiming with energy, as he sprang to his feet, “Why, madam, your daughter was with me in the train,—a little blue-eyed, brown-haired girl in black, who said she was Captain Alling’s niece.”

“He seemed greatly excited,” Mrs. Graham wrote, “and regretted that he did not know who you were. He got an idea somehow that your name was _Grey_, and said he received your letter with you asleep beside him. He is a splendid looking man, with the pleasantest eyes and the kindest voice I ever heard or saw.”

“Ye-es,” Maude said slowly, as she recalled the voice which had spoken so kindly to her, and the eyes which had looked so pleasantly into her own. “And that was Max Gordon! He was going to the Cedars, and Miss Raynor is the girl for whom he has lived single all these years. Oh-h!”

She was conscious of a vague regret that her stranger friend was the betrothed husband of Grace Raynor, who, at that very time, was thinking of her and fighting down a feeling as near to jealousy as it was possible for her to harbor. In the same mail with Maude’s letter from her mother there had come to the Cedars one from Max, who said that he had discovered who was his _compagnon da voyage_.

“She is teaching somewhere in your town,” he wrote “and I judge is not
very happy there. Can’t you do something for her, Grace? It has
occurred to me that to have a girl like her about you would do you a
great deal of good. We are both getting on in years, and need
something young to keep us from growing old, and you might make her
your companion. She is very pretty, with a soft, cultivated voice, and
must be a good reader. Think of it, and if you decide to do it,
inquire for her at Captain Alling’s. Her name is Maude Graham.

Yours lovingly,
“MAX.”

This was Max’s letter, which Grace read as she sat in her cosy sitting-room with every luxury around her which money could buy, from the hot house roses on the stand beside her to the costly rug on which her chair was standing in the ruddy glow of the cheerful grate fire. And as she read it she felt again the cold breath which had swept over her when Max was telling her of the young girl who had interested him so much. And in a way Grace, too, had interested herself in Maude, and through her maid had ascertained who she was, and that she was teaching in the southern part of the town. And there her interest had ceased. But it revived again on the receipt of Max’s letter and she said, “I must see this girl first and know what she is like. A woman can judge a woman better than a man, but I wish Max had not said what he did about our growing old. Am I greatly changed, I wonder?”

She could manage her chair herself in the house, and wheeling it before a long mirror, she leaned eagerly forward and examined the face reflected there. A pale, sweet face, framed in masses of snow white hair, which rather added to its youthful appearance than detracted from it, although she did not think so. She had been so proud of her golden hair, and the bitterest tears she had ever shed had been for the change in it.

“It’s my hair,” she whispered sadly,—“hair which belongs to a woman of sixty, rather than thirty-three, and there is a tired look about my eyes and mouth. Yes, I am growing old, oh, Max——,” and the slender fingers were pressed over the beautiful blue eyes where the tears came so fast. “Yes, I’ll see the girl,” she said, “and if I like her face, I’ll take her to please him.”

She knew there was to be an illumination on Christmas Eve in the church on Laurel Hill, and that Maude Graham was to sing a Christmas anthem alone.

“I’ll go, and hear, and see,” she decided, and when the evening came Grace was there in the Raynor pew listening while Maude Graham sang, her bright face glowing with excitement and her full, rich voice rising higher and higher, clearer and clearer, until it filled the church as it had never been filled before, and thrilled every nerve of the woman watching her so intently.

“Yes, she is pretty and good, too; I cannot be deceived in that face,” she said to herself, and when, after the services were over and Maude came up the aisle past the pew where she was sitting, she put out her hand and said, “Come here, my dear, and let me thank you for the pleasure you have given me. You have a wonderful voice and some time you must come and sing to me. I am Miss Raynor, and you are Maude Graham.”

This was their introduction to each other, and that night Maud dreamed of the lovely face which had smiled upon her, and the voice, which had spoken so kindly to her.

Two weeks afterwards Grace’s note was brought to her and she read it with her feet upon the stove hearth and the low January sun shining in upon her.

Miss Raynor wanted her for a companion and friend, to read and sing to and soothe her in the hours of languor and depression, which were many.

“I am lonely,” she wrote, “and, as you know, wholly incapacitated from
mingling with the world, and I want some one with me different from my
maid. Will you come to me, Miss Graham? I will try to make you happy.
If money is any object I will give you twice as much as you are now
receiving, whatever that may be. Think of it and let me know your
decision soon.

“Yours very truly,
“GRACE RAYNOR.”

“Oh,” Maude cried. “Eight dollars a week and a home at the Cedars, instead of four dollars a week and boarding around. Of course I will go, though not till my present engagement expires. This will not be until some time in March,” and she began to wonder if she could endure it so long, and, now that the pressure was lifting, how she had ever borne it at all.

But whatever may be the nature of our surroundings, time passes quickly, and leaves behind a sense of nearly as much pleasure as pain, and when at last the closing day of school came, it was with genuine feelings of regret that Maude said good-bye to the pupils she had learned to love and the patrons who had been so kind to her.