David Fleming's Forgiveness

by Margaret M. Robertson

He had decided defects as a school-master. His government of his school was imperfect; he took it up by fits and starts, having his stern days, when the falling of a pin might be heard in his domain, and days when the boys and girls were mostly left to their own devices; but there were no idle days among them. No teacher who had ever ruled in the High-School could compare with him in the power he had to make the young people care for their books and their school-work, or to present to the clever idle ones among them the most enticing motives to exertion. “He got them on,” the fathers and mothers said, and though he made no pretension to being a very good man, and sometimes used sharper words than were pleasant to hear, he loved the truth and hated a lie, and lived an honourable life among them, and all men regarded him with respect, and most men with affection.

So, putting all things together, Davie and Katie and the other young people of Gershom had a fair chance of a happy winter, and so it proved to the brother and sister. There were plenty of amusements going on in the village, but with these they had little to do. Their grandfather fretted if they were not at home in the evening, and it was no self-denial for them to stay away from all gay village doings—at least it was none to Davie. Except the master’s lectures, and those debates and spelling-schools in which the reputation and honour of the High-School were concerned, he scorned them all. Katie did not scorn them. She would have enjoyed more of them than fell to her share, but yet was willing to agree with her grandmother that more might not be good for her, and was on the whole content without them.

Very rarely does there come in a lifetime a triumph so unmixed as the boy enjoys who is not only declared first, but shows himself before his whole world to be first in the village school. It does not matter whether he distinguishes himself by the spelling of many-syllabled words, and the repeating of rules and the multiplication table, or by his proficiency in higher branches, which are mysteries to the greater part of the admiring audience. It is all the same a triumph, pure, unmixed, satisfying. At least it possesses all these qualities in a higher degree than any future triumph can possibly possess them.

Such a triumph was Davie’s. It was Katie’s too in a way, but it was Davie’s chiefly on this occasion, because it was his for the first time. But that did not spoil Katie’s pleasure at all. Quite the contrary. Davie’s triumph was hers, and she almost forgot to answer when her own name was called to receive her merited share of the honours, so full was she of the thought of what her grandfather would say when she should tell him about Davie.

And Katie had a little triumph all her own. It troubled her for a while, and did not come to anything after all, but still it was a triumph, and acknowledged to be such by all Gershom. She was chosen out of all the girls who had been Mr Burnet’s pupils during the winter, to teach the village school. The village school stood next to the High-School, and for Katie Fleming, not yet sixteen, to be chosen a teacher, was a feather in her cap indeed. Her grandfather was greatly pleased and so was Miss Elizabeth. Mrs Fleming, coveting for her good and clever Katie advantages which in their circumstances she could only hope to enjoy through her own exertions, would have been willing to spare her from home, and Miss Elizabeth, who had come to love the girl dearly, knew that she could often have her with her, should she be in the village during the summer. But Katie never kept the village school, nor any school. Her grandfather did not like the idea of it, nor did Davie. Miss Betsey Holt set her face against it from the very first, though why she should interest herself especially in the matter did not clearly appear. The chances were that it would be but a poor school that a child like Katie Fleming would keep, clever scholar though she was, Miss Betsey said, which was very possibly quite true. But it was on Katie’s own account that she did not approve of the place.

“Not that it would hurt her as it might some girls to ‘board round’ in the village houses, a week at a time, as she would have to do, and leave her evenings free to spend with the idle young folks of the place. It, maybe, wouldn’t spoil that pretty pot of violets to have the street dust blow on them for an hour or two, but you wouldn’t care about having them set out to catch it. And Katie Fleming is better at home making butter for her grandmother than she would be anywhere else, and happier too, if she only knew it.”

Miss Betsey said this to Miss Elizabeth one day when she called, having some business with the squire, and she said something like it to the grandmother, which helped to a decision that Katie was to stay at home. Katie was a little disappointed for the moment, but she acknowledged that she might have failed with the school, and that she was much needed at home; and Davie’s satisfaction at the decision did much to reconcile her to it. And all the rest were satisfied as well as Davie, for Katie’s being at home made a great deal of difference in the house.

Even Mrs Fleming, with her hopeful nature and her firm trust in God, had times of great anxiety with regard to Davie. He was so like the son who had gone so early astray, who had darkened all his father’s life, and nearly broken his heart, that she could not but anxiously watch his words and his ways, attaching to them sometimes an importance that was neither wise nor reasonable. His grandfather’s discipline was strict, not to say severe, and Davie’s resistance, or rather his unwilling submission and obedience, for he seldom resisted his grandfather’s will, made her afraid. Though she would not have acknowledged it to Davie, she knew that his grandfather was hard on him sometimes, far harder than, for such faults as Davie’s, she herself would have been, and she feared that unwilling or resentful obedience might in time change to rebellion, and beyond such a possibility as that the anxious grandmother did not dare to look.

But it was only once in a great while that she suffered herself to contemplate the possibility of “anything happening” to Davie. The sore troubles she had passed through had shaken her somewhat, and she was growing old, but her bright and sunny nature generally asserted itself, in spite of the weakness which troubles and old age bring. So when she had occasion to speak to the old man about Davie, trying to make him more hopeful concerning him, and more patient with his faults, she could do so with a faith in the boy’s future which could not fail sometimes to inspire him with the same hopefulness.

And indeed Davie was not more wilful and wayward than is often the case with lads of his age, nor was he idle, or inclined to do less than his just share of what was to be done. On the contrary, he had great good sense and perseverance in carrying out any plans of work which suited his ideas of how work ought to be done. But unfortunately his plans were not always exactly those of his grandfather. Of course he did not hesitate to acknowledge his grandfather’s right to do as he pleased in his own place, when his grandmother put it to him in that way, and he was quite as ready to acknowledge that his wisdom as to matters in general, and as to farm-work in particular, was “not to be mentioned in the same day” with that of his grandfather. But when the work was to be done, he did not yield readily to suggestions, or even to commands, and had a way of coming back to the disputed point, and even of carrying it, to a certain extent, which looked to his grandfather like sheer perversity.