COALS OF FIRE
When Donald Neil left Glenoro his pastor drew a breath of relief. Donald's conduct towards him, since the day of the picnic had been above reproach, but try as he would, he could not help associating all his troubles with that young man. With his removal the minister was not surprised to find that his affairs settled down to their old happy level. The story of his youthful frivolity was dying out; when Coonie furnished a new variation of it every day, sensible people ceased to believe even the original. The young people, always ready to follow him, convinced themselves, though somewhat reluctantly, that he had acted rightly regarding the organ; and the older folk considered his conduct in that affair wise beyond his years.
Without any volition on his part he gradually drifted into his old intimacy with Jessie Hamilton. Since her reconciliation with Donald he had enjoyed very little of her company, and had missed it more than he cared to admit. Jessie admired him profoundly; the very fact of his being a minister set him immeasurably above all the other young men of her acquaintance. He must be a wonder of goodness and unselfishness, the girl felt, to give up his whole life to the service of God, and she was filled with a sublime joy to find that he deigned to single her out to assist him in his great work. Though she never dreamed of setting him above her hero, she felt compelled to admit that he must be a great deal better than Don, for Don had lately scouted the idea of being a minister. She felt herself highly privileged to be the friend of such a man. And since he was engaged to be married, there could be no harm in her being friendly with him.
Whatever mistakes John Egerton made, they were committed with the best intentions. He determined, while enjoying Jessie's friendship, to maintain a strictly impartial position among the young ladies of his congregation. But somehow fate seemed against him. The very night after Donald left there was a husking bee at Big Archie Red McDonald's in the Oa, and as he sat down in the long, noisy row of boys and girls and helped to fill the barn with laughter and dust, he found himself next to Jessie. He had never seen her look prettier, and she had never found him more entertaining. He threw himself into the work with all his might, and was so gay and so witty, that the common verdict was spoken by Big Archie Red's bigger and redder son, that "they didn't know what fun was until the minister came." He could not resist the pleasure of a walk down the great terraces in the moonlight in such pleasant company as Jessie afforded. That walk was the beginning of it; what was to be the end, all Glenoro was in a fever to know. There was no doubt of one thing; the minister was "keeping company" with John Hamilton's second girl whether his congregation liked it or not.
For a short season John Egerton experienced an uncomfortable sensation that he was not acting just rightly. This was at Thanksgiving time, when he paid his first visit to Toronto. As the train whirled him northward again, through the sunlit spaces of brown earth and blue sky, he told himself positively that he had gone too far with the little village belle, and that he must hereafter walk more circumspectly. For when he had found himself once more in the stately home of the woman he loved, and Helen, tall and beautiful, had swept into the spacious drawing-room to greet him, he realised, for the first time, what a difference lay between the queenly young woman of society and the simple little country girl who had been absorbing such a dangerously large amount of his time and thoughts. Helen, so composed, so elegantly poised, so thoroughly at home in the best social circles of the city, would be a perfect companion for him, one in every way suited to take her place at his side in the brilliant career he had mapped out for himself. Jessie would have looked out of place, he feared, in Helen's elegant home.
But when he returned, and met the Glenoro girl coming down the northern hill, her nut-brown curls dancing in the wind, her cheeks crimson from its caress, her eyes as clear and radiant as the river which flashed before her, he was forced to admit that Jessie was as perfectly in accord with her surroundings as Helen had been in the flower-scented drawing-room. He was bewildered. Was it possible, he asked himself, for a man to have two natures, quite distinct in tastes? He worried himself almost to distraction over the question; but as there was no one to answer it, he drove it from his mind by spending the evening at the Hamiltons' teaching Jessie to play chess.
And so the autumn passed very merrily for the minister of Glenoro, disturbed only by occasional doubts as to his course, until, with the opening of winter, came the Christmas holidays and Donald Neil. Duncan Polite's heart grew happy again under his boy's sunny presence. Donald's deep regret at the disappointment he was causing his best friend made him assiduous in his attentions to Duncan. He spent so much of his time at the old shanty on the hill that the old man's cares were for the time forgotten.
Unfortunately, Donald's advent brought anything but peace in other quarters. John Egerton asked himself with keen self-reproach if it were possible that he was jealous of the young man. He could not help resenting Donald's cool manner of appropriating Jessie's time and attention. The young minister was not accustomed to being set aside in that lordly fashion. He felt it was high time that this haughty youth, who had behaved so ill to him ever since his arrival in Glenoro, was taught a lesson. He would show him that John Egerton was to be shoved aside by no man. So he steadily continued his visits to the Hamiltons', and abated not one whit his attentions to their pretty daughter.
Those were exciting days for Glenoro. Coonie was kept so busy manufacturing and spreading tales of the rivals, that he quite neglected Miss Cotton, and sometimes even forgot to linger on the road. Jessie, herself, seemed to enjoy the excitement as much as anyone. Perfectly secure in the knowledge that Donald loved her, and equally sure of her love for him, she felt there could be no harm in having "a little fun." She was carried away by the flattery, and took a foolish pleasure in encouraging both young men. She lived only in the intoxication of the moment, quite careless of the fact that she was laying up sorrow for herself as well as for others.
The winter had opened with a severe frost preceding the snow, and the Oro was a glittering sheet of ice. In the daytime the school children covered the shining expense, and when a game of shinny was in progress Mr. Watson might ring his bell till it cracked. But in the evenings the grown-up youth of the village appropriated the pond. Every night it was black with skaters, while occasionally a group would spin away up the river under the dark, over-shadowing banks.