Between Whiles

by Helen Hunt Jackson

The visions did not fade with the day. They pursued Donald, and haunted his down-sitting and his uprising. He tried to shake them off, drive them away; for when he came to think the thing over soberly, he called himself an old fool to be thus going daft about a child like Elspie.

"Barely twenty at the most, and me forty. She'd not look at an old fellow like me, and maybe't would be like a sin if she did," said Donald to himself over and over again. But it did no good. "As good as she is bonny, bonny, bonny," rang in his ears, and the blue eyes and golden hair and merry smile floated before his eyes. There was no help for it. Since the world began there have been but two roads out of this sort of mystic maze in which Donald now found himself lost,--but two roads, one bright with joy, one dark with sorrow. And which road should it be Donald's fate to travel must be for the child Elspie to say. After a few days of bootless striving with himself, during which time he had spent more hours with Katie than he had for a year before,--it was such a comfort to him to see in her face the subtle likeness to Elspie, and to hear her talk about plans of bringing her to Charlottetown for a visit if nothing more,--after a few days of this, Captain Donald, one Saturday afternoon, sailing past Orwell Head, suddenly ran into the inlet where he had taken the picnic party, and, mooring the "Heather Bell" at Spruce Wharf, announced to his astonished mate that he should lie by there till Monday.

It was a bold step of Captain Donald's. But he was not a man for half-and-half ways in anything; and he had said grimly to himself that this matter must be ended one way or the other,--either he would win the child or lose her. He would know which. Girls had loved men twenty years older than themselves, and girls might again.

The Sunday passed off better than his utmost hopes. Everybody except Elspie was cordially glad to see him. Visitors were not so common at the Orwell Head farm-houses that they could fail of welcome. The McCloud boys were thankful to hear all that Donald had to tell, and with the old father and mother he had always been a prime favorite. It had been a sore disappointment to them, as year after year went by, to see that there seemed no likelihood of his becoming Katie's husband. As the day wore on, even Elspie relaxed a little from her indifferent attention to him, and began to perceive that, spite of the odious freckles, he was, as the girls had said, a handsome man.

Partly because of this, and partly from innate coquetry, she said, when he was taking leave, "Ye'll not be comin' again for another year, maybe?"

"Ye'll see, then!" laughed Donald, with a sudden wise impulse to refrain from giving the reply which sprang to his lips,--"To-morrow, if ye'd ask me!"

And from the same wise, strangely wise impulse he curbed his desire to go again the next Sunday and the next. Not until three weeks had passed did he go; and then Elspie was clearly and unmistakably glad to see him. This was all Donald wanted. "I'll win her, the bonny thing!" he said to himself. "An' I'll not be long, either."

And he was right. A girl would have been hard indeed that would not have been touched by the beaming, tender face which Donald wore, now that hope lighted it up. His masterful bearing, too, was a pleasure to the spirited Elspie, who had no liking for milksops, and had sent off more than one lover because he came crawling too humbly to her feet. Elspie had none of the gentle, quiet blood which ran in Katie's veins. She had even been called Firebrand in her younger, childish days, so hot was her temper, so hasty her tongue. But the firm rule of the Scottish household and the pressure of the stern Scotch Calvinism preached in their kirk had brought her well under her own control.

"Eh, but the bonny lass has hersel' well in hand," thought the admiring Donald more than once, as he saw her in some family discussion or controversy keep silence, with flushing cheeks, when sharp words rose to her tongue.

All this time Katie was plodding away at her millinery, inexpressibly cheered by Donald's new friendliness. He came often to see her, and told her with the greatest frankness of his visits at the farm. He would take her some day, he said; the trouble was, he could never be sure beforehand when it would answer for him to stop there. Katie sunned herself in this new familiar intercourse, and the thought of Donald running up to the old farm of a Sunday as if he were one of the brothers going home. In the contentment of these thoughts she grew younger and prettier,--began to look as she did at twenty. And Donald, gazing scrutinizingly in her face one day, seeking, as he was always doing, for stray glimpses of resemblance to Elspie, saw this change, and impulsively told her of it.