THE SCHOOLMASTER'S BRIDE
"Who was the first bride who came to this house, Captain Jim?" Anne asked, as they sat around the fireplace after supper.
"Was she a part of the story I've heard was connected with this house?" asked Gilbert. "Somebody told me you could tell it, Captain Jim.""Well, yes, I know it. I reckon I'm the only person living in Four Winds now that can remember the schoolmaster's bride as she was when she come to the Island. She's been dead this thirty year, but she was one of them women you never forget.""Tell us the story," pleaded Anne. "I want to find out all about the women who have lived in this house before me.""Well, there's jest been three--Elizabeth Russell, and Mrs. Ned Russell, and the schoolmaster's bride.
Elizabeth Russell was a nice, clever little critter, and Mrs. Ned was a nice woman, too. But they weren't ever like the schoolmaster's bride.
"The schoolmaster's name was John Selwyn. He came out from the Old Country to teach school at the Glen when Iwas a boy of sixteen. He wasn't much like the usual run of derelicts who used to come out to P.E.I. to teach school in them days. Most of them were clever, drunken critters who taught the children the three R's when they were sober, and lambasted them when they wasn't. But John Selwyn was a fine, handsome young fellow. He boarded at my father's, and he and me were cronies, though he was ten years older'n me. We read and walked and talked a heap together. He knew about all the poetry that was ever written, I reckon, and he used to quote it to me along shore in the evenings.
Dad thought it an awful waste of time, but he sorter endured it, hoping it'd put me off the notion of going to sea. Well, nothing could do THAT--mother come of a race of sea-going folk and it was born in me. But Iloved to hear John read and recite. It's almost sixty years ago, but I could repeat yards of poetry I learned from him. Nearly sixty years!"Captain Jim was silent for a space, gazing into the glowing fire in a quest of the bygones. Then, with a sigh, he resumed his story.
"I remember one spring evening I met him on the sand-hills. He looked sorter uplifted--jest like you did, Dr. Blythe, when you brought Mistress Blythe in tonight. I thought of him the minute I seen you. And he told me that he had a sweetheart back home and that she was coming out to him. I wasn't more'n half pleased, ornery young lump of selfishness that I was; Ithought he wouldn't be as much my friend after she came. But I'd enough decency not to let him see it.
He told me all about her. Her name was Persis Leigh, and she would have come out with him if it hadn't been for her old uncle. He was sick, and he'd looked after her when her parents died and she wouldn't leave him.
And now he was dead and she was coming out to marry John Selwyn. 'Twasn't no easy journey for a woman in them days. There weren't no steamers, you must ricollect.
"`When do you expect her?' says I.
"`She sails on the Royal William, the 20th of June,'
says he, `and so she should be here by mid-July. Imust set Carpenter Johnson to building me a home for her. Her letter come today. I know before I opened it that it had good news for me. I saw her a few nights ago.'
"I didn't understand him, and then he explained--though I didn't understand THAT much better.
He said he had a gift--or a curse. Them was his words, Mistress Blythe--a gift or a curse. He didn't know which it was. He said a great-great-grandmother of his had had it, and they burned her for a witch on account of it. He said queer spells--trances, I think was the name he give 'em--come over him now and again. Are there such things, Doctor?""There are people who are certainly subject to trances," answered Gilbert. "The matter is more in the line of psychical research than medical. What were the trances of this John Selwyn like?""Like dreams," said the old Doctor skeptically.
"He said he could see things in them," said Captain Jim slowly.
"Mind you, I'm telling you jest what HE said--things that were happening--things that were GOING to happen.
He said they were sometimes a comfort to him and sometimes a horror. Four nights before this he'd been in one--went into it while he was sitting looking at the fire. And he saw an old room he knew well in England, and Persis Leigh in it, holding out her hands to him and looking glad and happy. So he knew he was going to hear good news of her.""A dream--a dream," scoffed the old Doctor.
"Likely--likely," conceded Captain Jim. "That's what _I_ said to him at the time. It was a vast more comfortable to think so. I didn't like the idea of him seeing things like that--it was real uncanny.
"`No,' says he, `I didn't dream it. But we won't talk of this again. You won't be so much my friend if you think much about it.'
"I told him nothing could make me any less his friend.
But he jest shook his head and says, says he:
"`Lad, I know. I've lost friends before because of this. I don't blame them. There are times when I feel hardly friendly to myself because of it. Such a power has a bit of divinity in it--whether of a good or an evil divinity who shall say? And we mortals all shrink from too close contact with God or devil.'
"Them was his words. I remember them as if 'twas yesterday, though I didn't know jest what he meant.
What do you s'pose he DID mean, doctor?"
"I doubt if he knew what he meant himself," said Doctor Dave testily.
"I think I understand," whispered Anne. She was listening in her old attitude of clasped lips and shining eyes. Captain Jim treated himself to an admiring smile before he went on with his story.
