Chapter VII: The Apprentice

The long, endless years, crowded with petty episodes and uniformities, and moving like a cumbrous, creeping train that stops at every station, flash like an express past the eye of memory. Yet it is these unrecorded minutiæ of monotonous months that color the fabric of our future lives, eating into our souls like a slow acid. When, in after years, Matt Strang’s youth defiled before him, the panorama seemed more varied than when he was living the scenes in all their daily detail of dull routine, and when, whatever their superficial differences, they were all linked for him by an underlying unity of toil and aspiration.

First came his apprenticeship in Cattermole’s saw-mill, at the opposite outskirt of the forest, twenty miles from Cobequid. For, though he early tired of savagery, as a blind-alley on the road to picture-painting, he refused, in the dogged pride of his boyish heart, to return to his folks, contenting himself with informing them of his whereabouts and of his intention to apprentice himself (with or without their consent). Labor being so scarce that year, Deacon Hailey drove over in great haste to offer him a loving home. Matt, who happened to be in the house, which was only parted from the mill-stream by a large vegetable-garden, saw through a window the deacon’s buggy arrive at the garden-path, and the deacon himself alight to open the wooden gate. The boy’s resentment flamed afresh, and it was supplemented by dread of the deacon’s inarticulate conversation. He fled to Mrs. Cattermole in the kitchen.

She was a shrewish, angular person, economical of everything save angry breath. A black silk cap with prim bows and ribbons sat severely on her head, and a thread-net confined her hair. Cattermole, a simple, religious, hen-pecked creature, had gone to the village store to trade off butter.

“There’s Ole Hey coming!” cried Matt, breathlessly.

“Kin’t you speak quietly?” thundered Mrs. Cattermole. “You made my heart jump like a frog. You don’t mean Ole Hey from Cobequid, the man es you said married your mother?”

“Yes, thet’s the skunk. I reckon he’s come to take me back.”

Mrs. Cattermole’s eyes flashed angrily. “Well, I swan! But you’ve promised to bide with us.”

“Thet’s so. I wouldn’t go back fur Captain Kidd’s treasure! I won’t see him.”

“I’ll tell him you’re gone away.”

“No,” said Matt, sturdily. “I wrote that I was goin’ to be ’prenticed here, and there ain’t any call for lies. Tell him I’m in the kitchen and I won’t come out, and I don’t want to hev anythin’ to do with him. See!”

“Well, set there and mind the cradle, and I’ll jest give him slockdologee. You uns allow you’re considerable smart, Cobequid way, but I reckon he’s struck the wrong track this time.”

Matt grinned joyously. “Spunk up to him, ma’am!” he cried, with stirring reminiscences of fights at McTavit’s. “Walk into him full split!”

“You mind the baby, young man. There won’t be no touse at all. He don’t set foot in my kitchen, and there’s an end of it.”

Mrs. Cattermole greeted the deacon politely, and informed him that the lad he was inquiring after was sulking in the kitchen, and that he refused to receive his visitor on any account. The deacon sighed unctuously with an air of patient martyrdom. Matt’s obduracy heightened his estimate of the lad’s value as a gratuitous field-worker, and sharpened his sense of being robbed of what small dowry Mrs. Strang had brought him.

“The boy is dreadful set agin me,” he complained. “But, es I told his poor mother, if you let a boy run wild, wild he runs, hey? Anyways, it ain’t fur me to fail in lovin’-kindness. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, ain’t the gospel _we’re_ called upon to practise. I allus thinks there’s no sort o’ use in bein’ a Christian on Sundays and a heathen on week-days.”

“No, thet thar ain’t,” Mrs. Cattermole assented, amiably.

“Even to beasts a man kin be a Christian, hey? I reckon I’d better wait in your kitchen an’ give the mare a rest. If _I_’ve come on a fool’s errand, thet ain’t a reason my ole nag should suffer, hey?”

Mrs. Cattermole, seeing the outworks taken, directed the deacon, by a flank movement, into the parlor, as alone befitting his dignity. To Matt this parlor, far finer than the best room at home, was a chamber of awe, but also of attraction, for its walls were hung with sober Bible prints. Mrs. Cattermole stood there among her splendors with her back to the door, partly for defensive purposes, partly so as not to depreciate one of the hair-cloth chairs by sitting down. It was enough for one day that her guest sat solidly on the rocking-chair of honor.

“We’ve been hevin’ too much soft weather, Mrs. Cattermole, arter all thet heavy snow.”

“Yes, I’m afeard the dam will go out,” responded Mrs. Cattermole, gloomily.

They discussed the disastrous thaw of a few years back, with a vivid remembrance of the vegetables and dairy produce spoiled in the flooded cellars.

“But it’s the Lord’s will,” summed up the deacon. “It ain’t any use heapin’ up worldly treasure, I allus thinks.”

“Thet’s a fact.” Mrs. Cattermole shook her head in sad acquiescence.

“Heaven’s the only safe place to lay up your goods, hey? So I guess I’m just goin’ to forgive thet durned boy all the anxiety he’s giv his poor mother an’ me, an’ take him back right along.”

“Oh, but I guess you ain’t,” said Mrs. Cattermole. “We’ve promised to take him on here.”

“We’ll let you off thet thar promise, Mrs. Cattermole. We ain’t folks as allus wants to hold people tight to every onthinkin’ word. An’ you won’t be the loser hardly, for the lad ain’t worth a tin pint to mortal man. He’s a dreamy do-nuthin’, an’ the worry he’s been to his poor mother you’ve no idee--allus wastin’ the Lord’s hours, unbeknown to her, in scrawlin’ picters an’ smutchin’ boards with colors.”

“I reckon he’ll come in handy in our paint-shop, then.”

The deacon shook his head, as if pitying her bubble delusions.

“He ain’t smart, an’ he ain’t good-tempered. You see for yourself how grouty he is to the best friend a boy ever hed.”

“He ain’t smart, I know. Thet’s why we ain’t goin’ to pay him no wages.”

The deacon chawed his quid and swayed in silent discomfiture.

“Ah, it’s his poor mother I’m thinkin’ of,” he said, after a while. “She’s thet delicate she’d kinder worry if he was to--a mother’s heart, hey? If ’twas my boy, I’d be proper glad to see him in the han’s of sech a hard-workin’, God-fearin’ couple.”

“You hedn’t ought to talk to me,” said Mrs. Cattermole, softening. “Father’d be terrible ugly if I was to settle anythin’ while he was to the store.”

“And if he wouldn’t it’s a pity. Wives, obey your husbands, hey? But there ain’t no call for hurry. More haste less speed, I allus thinks. But I don’t want to keep you from your occupations. There air some visitors who forgit folks kin’t afford to keep more’n one Sunday a week, hey? Sorter devil’s darnin’-needles flyin’ into your ear--they worry you, and they don’t do themselves no good. So don’t you take no notice of me. I’ll jest talk to Matt to fill up the time.”

Mrs. Cattermole straightened herself against the door. “He won’t listen; he’s too mad.”

“I reckon I could tone him down some.”

“Guess not. He’s too sot--he won’t come in.”

“I ain’t proud. I’ll go to him. True pride is in doin’ what’s right, I allus thinks. Some folks kin’t see the difference between true pride an’ false pride. I’ll go to the kitchen.”

“I’d rayther you didn’t, deacon. It’s all in a clutter.”

The conversation drooped. The deacon’s mouth moved in mere chawing. Swallowing his quid in deference to the parlor, he cut himself a new chunk.

“You’ve heerd about the doctor, Mrs. Cattermole?” he began again.

“I dunno es I hev.”

“What! Not heerd about our doctor es was said to practise the Black Art?”

“Oh, the sorcerer es lives on the ole wood-road. My brother who drives the stage was tellin’ me ’bout it. He sets spirits turnin’ tables, tellin’ the future, an’ nobody’ll go past his house arter dark.”

“Ah, but the elders called on him last week,” said the deacon. “Of course we couldn’t hev him in the vestry. An’ he explained to the committee thet sperrits or devils ain’t got nuthin’ to do with it.”

“Lan’ sakes! An’ you believed him?”

“Waal, my motto is allus believe your fellow-critters. An evil mind sees a lookin’-glass everyways, hey? He jest showed us how to make a table turn and answer questions. He says it’s no more wonderful than turnin’ a grindstone.”

“I guess he’s pulled the wool over the eyes o’ the Church,” said Mrs. Cattermole, sceptically.

“Not hardly! He turned thet thar table in broad daylight with the Bible open upon it, to show thet Satan didn’t hev a look in.”

“The Bible on it! ’Pears to me terrible ongodly.”

“Ongodly! Why, you an’ me kin do it--two pillars o’ the Church! I guess the Evil One couldn’t come nigh _us_, hey?”

“I dunno es it would turn if you an’ me was to do it.”

“You bet! It told me ’bout the future world, an’ my poor Susan’s Christian name, an’ how much to ast for my upland hay.”

“Good lan’!” cried Mrs. Cattermole. “An’ would it tell me whether my sister is through her sickness yet?”

“You may depend!”

“My! Thet’s jest great!” And Mrs. Cattermole eagerly inquired how one set about interrogating the oracle.

The deacon explained, adding that the parlor table would not do. It must be a rough deal table.

“Ah, the kitchin table,” said Mrs. Cattermole, walking into the elaborately laid trap.

“I dunno,” said the deacon, shaking his head. “Air you sure it ain’t too large for us to span around?”

“We could let the flaps down.”

The deacon chawed reflectively.

“Waal, it might,” he said, cautiously, at last. “There ain’t no harm in tryin’. We hedn’t ought to give up anythin’ without tryin’, I allus thinks. One never knows, hey?”

“I kinder think we ought to try,” said Mrs. Cattermole.

The deacon rose ponderously, and followed his guide into the kitchen.

“Why, there’s Matt!” he cried, in astonished accents. “Good-day, sonny.”

Matt strained his ears, but pursed his lips and rocked the cradle in violent impassivity. The deacon was uneasy at the boy’s sullen resentment. He could not understand open enemies.

“How’s your health, hey?” he asked, affectionately.

“Oh, I’m hunky dory,” said Matt, in off-hand school-boy slang.

“I’m considerable glad you’ve found a good place with rael Christians, Matt. I on’y hope you’ve made up your mind to work hard an’ turn over a new leaf. It’s never too late to mend, I allus thinks. You’re growin’ a young man, now; no more picter-makin’, hey? If it warn’t that you air so moony an’ lay-abed I’d give you a chanst on my own land, with pocket-money into the bargain, hey, an’ p’raps a pair o’ store shoes fur a Chrismus-box.”

A flame shot from Mrs. Cattermole’s now-opened eyes. She shut the cellar door with a vicious bang, but ere she could speak Matt cried out, “I wouldn’t come, not fur five shillin’s a week!”

“An’ who wants you to come fur money? What is money, hey? Is it health? Is it happiness? No, no, sonny. If money was any use, my poor Susan would hev been alive to this day. You’ll know better when you’re my age.”

He spat out now, directing the stream into the sink under the big wooden pump.

“Don’t worry ’bout him,” interposed Mrs. Cattermole. “Here’s the table.”

Deacon Hailey waved a rebuking palm. “Dooty afore pleasure, Mrs. Cattermole. See here, sonny, I’ve been talkin’ with Mrs. Cattermole ’bout you. She’s promised me to be a mother to you, Heaven bless her! But I kin’t forget you’ve got a mother o’ your own.”

“She ain’t my mother now, she’s Ruth’s mother,” said Matt, half divining the mumble of words.

“She’s mother to both o’ you. A large heart, thet’s what she’s got. An’ if she’s Ruth’s mother, then I’m your father, hey? An’ it ain’t right of you to disobey your father and mother. But young folks nowadays treats the commandments like old boots,” and the deacon sighed, as if in sympathy with the sorrows of a neglected decalogue.

“I’ve got no father an’ no mother,” said Matt. “An’ I’m goin’ to be a picture-painter soon es I kin. I won’t do _any_thing else, thet’s flat. An’ when I’m bigger I’m goin’ to write to my uncle Matt and see if he kin sell my pictures fur me. If you was to drag me back by force, I’d escape into the woods. An’ I’d work my way to London to be handy my uncle Matt. I reckon he takes in ’prentices same es the boss here. So you jest tell my mother I’m done with her, see! I don’t want to hear any more ’bout it.”

His face resumed its set expression, and his rocking foot its violence.

The deacon cast a reproachful, irate glance at Mrs. Cattermole.

“Did I tell you a lie when I said he warn’t worth thet thar?” he vociferated, snatching the tin dipper from the water-bucket. The noise disturbed the baby, which began to whimper feebly. Matt turned his chair’s back on the deacon and gazed studiously towards the wood-house in the yard. The deacon’s face grew apoplectic. He seemed about to throw the dipper at the back of Matt’s head, but mastering himself he let it fall with a splash, and said, quietly: “I guess you won’t hev me to blame if he turns out all belly an’ no han’s. Some folks’d say I’m offerin’ you a smart, likely young man, with his heart in the wood-pile. But thet’s not Deacon Hailey’s way. He makes a pint of tellin’ the bad pints. He’s a man you could swap a horse with, hey? I tell you, Mrs. Cattermole, thet durned boy is all moonshine an’ viciousness, stuffed with conceit from floor to ridge-piece. Picters, picters, picters, is all he thinks about! Amoosin’ himself--thet’s his idee of life in this vale of tears. I reckon he thinks he’s goin’ to strike Captain Kidd’s treasure. But, arter all, he ain’t _your_ burden. I’ve giv his poor mother a home, an’ I ain’t the man to grudge bite an’ sup to her boy. So even now I don’t mind lettin’ you off. He’s my crost, and I’ve got to bear him. ’Tain’t no use bein’ a Christian only in church, hey?”

“I guess I’m a Christian, too,” said Mrs. Cattermole. “So I must bear with the poor lad an’ train him up some in the way he should go. An’ then there’s father. You’re a rael saint, deacon, but I sorter think where heaven is consarned father ’ud like a look-in es well. So let’s say no more ’bout it. Now, then, deacon, the table’s waitin’!”

He ignored the patient piece of furniture. “Waal, don’t blame me any if the buckwheat turns out bad,” he shouted, losing his self-control again, and spurting out his nicotian fluid at the stove like an angry cuttle-fish.

“Thet’s so,” acquiesced Mrs. Cattermole, quietly. “Now, then, Deacon Hailey, jest you set there.” She had taken a chair and placed her hands on the table.

“Hush!” said the deacon. “Don’t you see thet thar young un wakin’ up? The tarnation boy hes been shakin’ him like an earthquake. I didn’t know es you kep’ your baby in the kitchin or I wouldn’t hev troubled to come. When thet thar table kinder began to dance and jump, you wouldn’t thank me fur rousin’ the innocent baby, hey? Sleep, sleep, thet’s what a baby wants! A baby kin’t hev too much sleep an’ a grown-up person kin’t hev too little, hey? They’re a lazy slinky lot, the young men o’ the Province, sleepin’ with their mouths open, expectin’ johnny-cakes to fall into ’em. I wonder this young man here don’t get into a cradle hisself. He’d be es much use to his fellow-critters es makin’ picters, I do allow. This life’s a battle, I allus thinks, an’ star-gazin’ ain’t the way to sight the enemy, hey? I reckon I’ll git back now, Mrs. Cattermole. There’s ’nough time been wasted over thet limb of Satan. Jest you tell Cattermole what I say ’bout him, an’ if ever you git durned sick an’ tired feedin’ an onthankful lazybones, es you’re bound to git, sure es skunks, jest you remember Deacon Hailey is the Christian you’re lookin’ fur. An’ don’t you forgit it!” And very solemnly he strode without.

Mrs. Cattermole lifted her hands and brought them down again on the table with a thump. “The tarnation ole fox!” she cried, “tryin’ to bamboozle me with tales ’bout turnin’ tables. ’Tain’t likely es a table is goin’ to dance of itself, an’ tell me ’bout Maria’s sickness. Jest you come here, Matt, an’ lay your hands alongside o’ mine. What’s thet you’re doin’?”

For Matt had begun pensively adorning the hood of the cradle by means of a burned stick he had pulled from the stove.

“It’s on’y Ole Hey,” he said, reddening.

“Jest you leave off makin’ fun o’ your elders an’ betters,” she said, sharply. “There’ll be plenty of work fur you in the paint-shop.”

There was plenty of work, Matt found, in numerous other directions, too. Many more things than mechanical wood-cutting did the boy practise at Cattermole’s saw-mill. To begin with, Mrs. Cattermole’s apprehensions were justified and the spring freshets swept away the dam, and so Matt was set to work hauling brushwood and gravel and logs to build up a kind of breast-work. Cattermole was really a house-joiner and house-builder, so Matt acquired cabinet-making, decoration, and house-building. His farming and cattle-rearing experience was also considerably enlarged. He milked the cows, looked after four stage-horses (driven by Mrs. Cattermole’s brother) and thirty-six sheep, cut firewood, cleared out barns, turned churns, hoed potatoes, mowed hay, fed fowls and pigs, and rocked the cradle, and, in the interval of running the circular and up-and-down saws in the mill, worked in the paint-shop at the back, graining and scrolling the furniture and ornamenting it with roses and other gorgeous flowers, sometimes even with landscapes. This was his only opportunity of making pictures, for recreation hours he had none. He rose at four in the morning and went to bed at ten at night. His wages were his food and clothes, both left off.

Mrs. Cattermole made his garments out of her husband’s out-worn wardrobe, itself of gray homespun.

But the hours in the paint-shop threw their aroma over all the others and made them livable.

And Cattermole, though a hard was not a harsh taskmaster, and had gentle flashes of jest when Mrs. Cattermole was out of ear-shot. And, though winter was long, yet there were seasons of delicious sunshine, when the blueberries ripened on the flats, or the apples waxed rosy in the orchard; when the air thrilled with the song of birds, and the dawn was golden.

In one of these seasons of hope he wrote to his uncle of his father’s death and his own existence, and Cattermole paid the postage; an ingenuous letter full of the pathetic, almost incredible ignorance of obscure and sequestered youth, and inquiring what chances there would be for him to reap fortune by painting pictures in London. He addressed the letter--with vague recollection of something in his school reading-book--to Mr. Matthew Strang, Painter, National Gallery, London.

It was not an ill-written letter nor an ill-spelt. Here and there the orthography was original, but in the main McTavit had been not ineffectual, and there were fewer traces of illiteracy about the epistle than might have been imagined from Matt’s talk. But in Matt’s mind the written and the spoken were kept as distinct as printed type and the manuscript alphabet; they ran on parallel lines that never met, and that “Amur’can” should be spelled “American” seemed no more contradictory than that “throo” should be spelled “through.” The grammar he had used in scholastic exercises was not for everyday wear; it was of a ceremonious dignity that suited with the stateliness of epistolary communication. Alas! For all the carefulness of the composition, his uncle of the National Gallery gave no sign.

Matt’s suspense and sorrow dwindled at last into resignation, for he had come to a renewed sense of religion. As Mrs. Strang would have put it, he had found grace. There were a few pious books and tracts about the Cattermole establishment, to devour in stolen snatches or by bartering sleep for reading, and among these dusty treasures he lighted on _The Pilgrim’s Progress_, with quaint wood-cuts. In the moral fervor with which the dramatic allegory informed him Matt felt wickedness an impossibility henceforward; his future life stretched before him white, fleckless, unstainable. Meanness or falsehood or viciousness could never touch his soul. How curiously people must be constituted who could knowingly prefer evil, when good thrilled one with such rapture, bathed one in such peace! Already he felt the beatitude of the New Jerusalem. The pictures he painted should be _good_, please God. They should exhibit the baseness of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, castigate the town of Carnal Policy; he would uplift the eyes of the wicked to the contemplation of the Shining Ones. Though, after all, he began to ask himself, could any picture equal Bunyan’s book? Was not a book immeasurably the better medium of expression? The suspicion was strengthened by the reading of a dime novel which his mistress’s brother, the stage-driver, had left lying about. It was the first unadulterated novel he had read, and the sensational episodes stirred his blood, his new-born religious enthusiasm died. He loved Mike the Bush-ranger, who was the hero of the novel. Action, strong, self-dependent action, a big personality--there lay the admirable in life. The Christians and Hopefuls were pale-blooded figures after all, and unreal at that. In actual life one only came across mimics who used their language: the Deacon Haileys or the Abner Preeps, to whom even thieving Tommy were preferable. No wonder Mike had been driven to bush-ranging! What a pity he himself had not remained in his forest hut, rebel against humanity, king of the woods! Ah! and how inadequate was paint to express the fulness of life; the medium was too childishly simple. At most one could fix a single scene, a single incident, and that only in its outside aspect. Books palpitated with motion and emotion. He set to work to write a dime novel, stealing an hour from his scanty night. He made but slow progress, though he began with an exciting episode about a white boy besieged in his log-hut by a party of Indians, and saved by the sudden advent of a couple of bears. The words he wrote down seemed a paltry rendition of his thought and inner vision, they were tame and scant of syllable. He discovered that his literary palette was even more pitiful than his pictorial. Still he labored on, for the goal was grand. And, despite his mental divorce between pronunciation and orthography, his spoken English improved imperceptibly through all this contact with literature.

Then one wonderful day--to be marked with a white stone and yet also with a black--he received a letter from England. All his artistic ambition flamed up furiously again as he broke the seal:

LONDON, Limners’ Club.

DEAR NEPHEW,--Your letter gave me mingled pain and pleasure. I was
deeply grieved to hear of the sad death of your dear father. My
poor brother had not written to me nor had I seen him since his
marriage, but I knew I should somehow hear of it if anything went
wrong with him. I am shocked to have remained ignorant for so many
months after his death. I really think your mother should have let
me know, as she could have discovered my address through my wife’s
relatives, who live in Halifax. However, I hope God has given her
strength to bear the blow. And now, my dear Matthew, let me tell
you your letter is very childish, and not what I should have
expected of a young man of fourteen as you describe yourself. It is
very nice to amuse yourself by painting pictures; it keeps you out
of mischief. But how can you fancy that your pictures are worth any
money? Why, painting is the most difficult of all the arts; it
requires years and years of study under great masters, and it costs
a heap of money to pay models--that is, men or women who sit or
stand in uncomfortable positions while you are painting them. No
picture is any good that is done without models; if you wanted to
paint a horse you would have to hire a horse, and that is even more
expensive than hiring a man. Otherwise your horse would be all
wrong. Why, a friend of mine painted a picture of a forge, and he
had to have it all built up in his studio, and it cost a hundred
and twenty pounds. Studio! The word reminds me that an artist must
have a special room to work in, with windows on top, and these
rooms are very expensive. London is crammed full of artists who
have had all these advantages and yet they are starving. The
pictures that you do now everybody would laugh at. And where would
you get the money for frames? A nice gold frame might redeem your
pictures, but gold frames are dear. No, my dear Matthew, you must
not be a little fool. How could you, a poor orphan, think of coming
to London? Why, you would die in the streets. No; remain where you
are, and thank God that you are earning your clothes and your keep
with an honest sawyer in a land of peace and plenty, and are not a
burden on your poor mother. I hope you will listen to your uncle
like a good boy, and grow up to be grateful to him for saving you
from starvation. Believe me,

Your affectionate uncle,

MATTHEW STRANG.

Matt’s tears blistered the final sheet of this discouraging document. His roseate visions of the future faded to cold gray, his heart ached with a sudden sense of the emptiness of existence. But when he had come to the last word his hand clinched the letter fiercely. A great glow of resolution pervaded his being, like the heat that returns after a cold douche. “I will be a painter. I will, I will, I will!” he hissed. And he tore up the embryo of the dime novel and wrote again to his uncle:

MY DEAR UNCLE,--How good you are to write to me and tell me
everything I want to know. Don’t be afraid that I will starve in
London, dear uncle. I could always earn my living there in the
fields and paint late at night, but I won’t come till I have enough
money for lessons and models and a studio, though I think I could
draw horses without hiring them. I have always been very good at
animals. Besides, what do they do when they want bears, as the
geography book says there aren’t any bears in England? I could live
in the attic, and knock a hole in the roof. My mother doesn’t need
anything from me, thank God, as she is married again and bears the
blow well, and my sister Harriet is married too, so you see it will
be easy for me to save up money. As soon as my apprenticeship is
over I shall go on to the States, where the greatest fools make
heaps of money, and so in a few years, please God, I shall be able
to come over like you did, and be a great artist like you.
Good-bye, dear uncle, God bless you.

From your loving nephew,

MATTHEW STRANG.

P.S.--When I come over I will change my name if you like, so as not
to clash with yours. I know you would not like it if people thought
you had done my pictures.

P.P.S.--Besides, my real name now might be Matthew Hailey, as
mother has changed hers to that.

This letter evoked no answer.

When Matt’s apprenticeship was at an end, the first item of his programme broke down, for he lacked the money to carry him to the States, so he had to stay on at Cattermole’s farm at a petty wage, though a larger than Mrs. Cattermole was aware of, till he had scraped a little together. And then an accident occurred that bade fair to dispose of all the other items. He was at work in the saw-mill, when his leg got jammed between the log he was operating upon and the carriage that was bearing it towards the gang of up-and-down saws. There would not be room for his body to pass between the gang of saws and the framework that held them. It was an awful instant. He cried out, but his voice was lost in the roar of the water and the clatter of the machinery. Round went the water-wheel, the carriage glided along, offering inch after inch of the log to the cruel teeth, and Matt was drawn steadily with it towards the fatal point. With an inspiration he drew out the stout string he always carried in his pocket, and, making a noose, threw it towards a lever. It caught, and Matt was saved, for he had only to pull this lever to close the gate in the flume and shut out the water. When the machinery stopped the racket ceased, too, and Matt’s voice could be heard, and Cattermole rushed in from the adjoining furniture manufactory, and, knocking away the dogs at the end of the log, lifted it and released the prisoner, and then made him kneel down and offer a prayer for his salvation. Matt’s awakening sense of logic dimly insinuated that this was thanking Providence for having failed to mutilate him, but the atmosphere of Puritan acceptance in which he moved and had his being asphyxiated the nascent scepticism.

Shortly after, Matt bade farewell to Cattermole farm, with its complex appurtenances--a proceeding which Mrs. Cattermole christened “onchristian ingratitood.” She declared that he ought to strip off the clothes she had made him, and depart naked as he had come. From a dim corner of the kitchen Cattermole’s face signalled, “Don’t mind her. God bless you.”

Softened by the saw-mill accident, Matt tramped to Cobequid to see his mother before departing for Boston, and thence ultimately for England. He felt guilty, a sort of Prodigal Son, and kept assuring himself of his innocence and economy. The third Mrs. Hailey received him with a rapture that almost surpassed Billy’s. She hugged him to her bosom with sobs and told him her grievances. These were manifold, but seemed analyzable into four categories: one, the remissness of Harriet, whose visits were rare, and whose baby had bow-legs; two, the naughtiness of the children, of whom Matt had always been the only satisfactory specimen; three, the cruelty of their step-father in chastising them for the same; four, the deacon’s breach of contract in refusing to migrate to Halifax, or to permit her to hold Baptist prayer-meetings. Her black eyes flashed with strange fire when she spoke of her new husband’s crimes and derelictions. And there was the old dreaded hysteria in her threats to throw up the position. Evidently remarriage had not made her happy, he thought with added tenderness. Perhaps nothing could. He shuddered at his own deeper perception of unhappiness implanted in temperament and finding nutriment in any conditions.

In conclusion, she besought her boy--the only person in the world who loved her, the only person to whom she could tell her troubles--to go to Halifax instead of the States. It was far nearer, and money could be made just as easily. Her folks lived at Halifax, and though he must not dream of seeking their assistance, for they had been very bad to her, mewing her up strictly so that she had been forced to elope with her poor Davie, still it would be a consolation to know that he was near her own people, likewise not far from herself, in case of anything happening to either of them. Perhaps she would persuade her husband to move there, after all--who knew? Or she might come there herself and stay with him, for a week or two at any rate, and meantime he should write to her about the dear old town. Moved by her lack of reproaches and by her misery, and impressed into his olden subjugation to the handsome, masterful woman, Matt acquiesced. Perhaps his main motives were the comparative cheapness of the journey and the reinflammation of his childish curiosity concerning the gay city.

It was Saturday, but Matt suffered such tortures under the moral but mumbled exordiums of “Ole Hey,” of which his unaccustomed ear took in less than ever, that he determined to depart on the Monday. The deacon seemed to have aged considerably, his beard was matted and thick, and his dicky was stained with tobacco-juice. For the rest, Matt discovered that most of the children were employed about the farm or the works, and that they had ceased to go to school, the deacon having converted Ruth into a school-mistress when she could be spared from keeping the books of his tannery and grist-mill. Ruth herself he met with indifference that the stateliness of her unexpectedly tall presence did nothing to thaw. He was surprised to hear from Billy, whose bed he shared that night, and who was more greedy to hear Matt’s adventures than to talk, that they were all very fond of her, and that she could still romp heartily. But Ruth had gradually grown shadowy to his imagination beside his burning dreams of Art, and the sight of her seemed to add the last touch of insubstantiality to her image. And yet, in the boredom of the Sunday services, with his eye roving restlessly about the severe, unlovely meeting-house in search of distractions, he could not but be conscious that she was the sweetest and sedatest figure in the village choir that sang and flirted in the rising tiers of the gallery over the vestibule; and when Deacon Hailey, tapping his tuning-fork on the rails, imitated its note with a rasping croak, Matt had a flash of sympathy with the divined inner life of the girl in this discordant environment. He told her briefly of his plans--to save up enough money to get to his uncle in London, who would doubtless put him in the way of studying Art seriously. She said she wished she had something as fine to live and work for; still she was busy enough, what with book-keeping and teaching school, as she put it smilingly. Their parting, like their meeting, was awkward. Self-consciousness and shyness had come into their simple relation. Neither dared take the initiative of a kiss, which for the rest was a rare caress in Cobequid save between children and lovers. Relatives shook hands; even women were not free of one another’s lips. And for the lad’s part, timidity was all he felt in the presence of this sweet graceful stranger. Only at the last moment, when she handed him a keepsake in the shape of a prize copy of the _Arabian Nights_ her music-mistress had given her, did their looks meet as of yore, and then it was more the young painter than the old playmate who was touched by the earnest radiance of her eyes and the flicker of rose across the delicate fairness of her cheek. He made a little sketch of her in return, and sent it her from Halifax.

When he was on his way he opened the gilt-bound volume and read on the fly-leaf:

TO MATT

From Ruth.

God make you a great artist.