David Fleming's Forgiveness

by Margaret M. Robertson

Mark Varney redeemed his farm and moor, and carried his mother and his little daughter home again when Mr Maxwell was married. His farm was not so large after a time, for a part of it was laid out in building lots for the new village, and Mark, as the neighbours declared, was soon “well-to-do,” and doing well.

And though he never made so good a speech again as he made that day at the picnic, he has done for many a suffering and miserable man what in the first days of his coming to Gershom, Mr Maxwell did for him. He has followed, and comforted, and brought back to life and hope more than one or two poor besotted wretches, whom the rising prosperity of Gershom drew thither in the hope of getting bread. And he has never grown weary of the work, though sometimes he has had to grieve over ill-success.

It would be going beyond the truth to say that all Gershom was satisfied when the engagement of Miss Holt and the minister was announced, because there are some people who are never satisfied. But they whose opinion they valued most were satisfied. Mrs Fleming and Cousin Betsey had been hoping for it—almost expecting it all along, and one or two of Elizabeth’s special old-lady friends acknowledged that they had been praying for such a marriage all the while. As for Katie, it was in her eyes the only fitting end to the romance which she had guessed at long ago, and which she had been secretly and silently watching all these years.

As to whether or not she made a good minister’s wife, Elizabeth was never quite sure. But the minister was content, and so were most of the people. And even those who were never quite contented with anything, acknowledged that “she did as well as she knew how,” and that would be high praise for the most of us.

Clifton lived in the old home with them, for his good and their pleasure, till the time came when he made a home of his own, which, considering all things, was not so very long a time after all.

Although Jacob’s change from the first place to the second both in the business and in the town was not pleasant to him, it was wholesome. He had never been equal to the rôle of the great man of the place, and after the first feelings of humiliation wore away, and their affairs began to look prosperous again, the fact that “two heads are better than one” made itself apparent to him even more clearly than had been the case in the days when he found his father unable, and his brother unwilling, to give him help and counsel.

He came to be much better liked by his neighbours than he used to be, and was really a better man. He had fewer worries and fewer temptations, and though he was not what might be called “a shining light” either in the church or in the world, it was the opinion of his brethren and townsmen that his troubles had been blessed to him, and that he was getting along—not very fast, but in the right direction.

But that which did most for Jacob in his time of trouble was the knowledge of Mr Fleming’s forgiveness and friendship. It is not likely that he had ever acknowledged, even to himself, that he had sinned against him through his son more than others had done, but a sense of the old man’s silent anger had always been in him, and had been painful and humiliating to him—how painful he knew by the sense of relief he experienced whenever they came in contact afterward. He no longer stepped aside when he saw him approaching, so that the neighbours should not remark about the old man’s steadily averted face. They had never much to say to each other, but they met and exchanged kindly greetings as other men did, and all Gershom saw the change that had come over them both. Even his cousin Betsey grew friendly and frank in her intercourse with him and his wife, and that was a change certainly.

Few people ever knew just what had brought about this changed state of feeling. There was nothing to tell which Jacob cared to repeat. It would have done no good to bring up the old, sad story again, he well knew, and he said little about it even to his wife.

As for Mr Fleming—and indeed all the Flemings—the joyful tidings that the letter brought on that fair September morning were too sacred and sweet to be discussed much even among themselves. Katie always held that her grandfather would have forgiven Jacob Holt all the same if the letter had never come, because there was the Lord’s command clear and plain, “Forgive and ye shall be forgiven,” and it must have come to that at last.