Waldsen went to church with his betrothed every Sunday evening, and all the neighbours found it most right and proper; but it was not prayer or sermon or even the companionship of Andrea that held him through the long session, but Margaret’s voice leading the simple hymns. It seemed as if, in singing, she was speaking to him alone, and Gurth was both moved and puzzled by the transformation of her features.
One Sunday she chanced to look in his direction as she was singing and caught his expression as he gazed at her. Next day she told her father that she must rest her voice, and asked him to let Andrea supply her place in the choir for a while. She would like, she said, if possible to go to Glen Village for a week or so to stay with Mrs. Watson, an old friend of her mother’s, who was quite ill and needed friendly care. All this seemed most natural to the Deacon, who was quite satisfied that Andrea could manage for that length of time.
Margaret imagined that she was doing a wise thing in going away and leaving the pair wholly to themselves. On the contrary it opened Waldsen’s eyes to the position in which he stood, which to be perhaps brutally direct was this—the two women had changed places. He loved Andrea as a merry companion, but through her new competence and force she had lost her hold upon his mystic inner nature, that valued the ideal above the real. The two had not developed in unison and, practically, she had outstripped him. It was to Margaret that his spirit clung. Margaret, the woman he thought without emotion, as distant from him as the evening star, the reticence of whose nature fascinated him.
Waldsen was not morally inconstant. He was paying the penalty of a joint heritage of romance and hot-headed impulse. The blood of his parents did not mingle but contended in his veins.
Acadia was fading in a mist; love for love’s sake, the thrill of music and the ideal in Nature were passing away, yet he never for a moment entertained the slightest thought of turning backwards. The soil was there grasping and swallowing; he had pledged his future to wrestling with it for his bread; if he conquered, it might yield him food, and finally—peace. Andrea would be happy, and doubtless he should be content when his neck had become accustomed to the yoke; for, after all, his student philosophy aided him, and he realized that there is much in habit.
With the autumn came the furnishing of the house at the Hill Farm, and it occupied many of the dull days of early November. Andrea was in her element, and in a state of tranquil elation.
Only four rooms were to be used at first; a sunny kitchen, and sitting-room, and two bedrooms above. One of these was to have a blue paper and the other an old-fashioned chintz pattern sprinkled with bunches of poppies. “The poppies are for your room, Margaret—” said Andrea, when they were in the shop at Bridgeton choosing the household goods. “You like red so much, and you will stay with us often, always when your father goes away, you know.”
Margaret smiled at her ardour, but never was impatient or seemed to tire of discussing the little details so dear to the prospective young housekeeper, or of making visits with her to the new home and guiding her somewhat abrupt taste.
As Andrea worked with a will, her enthusiasm infected Waldsen, and he believed himself happy again, until he discovered, as he usually did, that some arrangement which particularly delighted him was a happy thought of Margaret’s.