{"id":109,"date":"2019-05-09T13:39:59","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T13:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/?post_type=chapter&p=109"},"modified":"2019-05-09T14:13:09","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T14:13:09","slug":"thirteen","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/chapter\/thirteen\/","title":{"raw":"Thirteen","rendered":"Thirteen"},"content":{"raw":"It was a blustery night in March when Rosalie and the little old lady came to the end of \u201cLes Miserables\u201d in that passage beautiful in its simplicity, that describes the last resting place of Jean Valjean.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThere is, in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, in the neigh\u00adborhood of the Potter\u2019s field, far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres, far from all those fantastic tombs, which display in the presence of eternity the hideous fashion of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, beneath a great yew on which the bind-weed climbs, among the dog-grass and the mosses, a stone. This stone is exempt no more than the rest from the leprosy of time, from the mould, the lichen, and the droppings of birds. The air turns it black, the water green. It is near no path, and people do not like to go in that direction, because the grass is high, and they would wet their feet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come out. There is, all about, a rustling of wild oats. In the Spring linnets sing in the tree.<\/em>\r\n\r\nThe stone is entirely blank. The only thought in cutting it, was of the essentials of the grave, and there was no other care, than to make the stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man. No name can be read there. Only many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines, which have gradually become illegible under the rain and the dust, and which are probably effaced;<\/em>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nIl dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien etrange,<\/em>\r\n\r\nIl vivait. Il mourut quand il n'eut plus son ange.<\/em>\r\n\r\nLa chose simplement d'elle-mene arriva,<\/em>\r\n\r\nComme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s\u2019en va.<\/em>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\u201cI'm sorry to come to the end of this wonderful book,\u201d said Rosalie. \u201cIt will always be my book, perhaps it is more wonderful than \u201cDon Quixote\u201d. I suppose it has to come to an end with the death of the hero.\"\r\n\r\n\"No great book ever comes to an end, it simply pauses with death or marriage. It cannot end; even when the hero and other chief characters are gone, it flows on in the lesser people in it. You always want more; you are satisfied and yet hungry.\"\r\n\r\n\"And I suppose,\" said Rosalie, \"it flows on in people's minds too. It will always flow on in mine.\"\r\n\r\n\"A great book, flows on like a big river. It seems to be lost in the sea, but fifty miles off shore you can dip up a good bucket of water from the Amazon, a little brackish perhaps but still fresh water. Then the burning sun catches up the waters from the sea, and the clouds carry them back to the mountain streams, and the river of great and lovely thoughts flow again through the minds and hearts of other, inspired writers.\"\r\n\r\n\"I've learned a lot from you Old Lady,\" said Rosalie, \"I think you're better than a year in college. I never had anyone talk to me about great books before.\"\r\n\r\n\"You will only fully understand them when you\u2019ve lived your life. My life on the infinite sea, my ten years of learning and practicing\u2014for that's the only way one really learns\u2014taught me all I know. I've had many years to reflect and hash it all over.\"\r\n\r\n\"How could you ever bear to marry again after you\u2019d had Mat?\" Asked Rosalie, \"How could you bear it, Little Old Lady?\"\r\n\r\n\"Shall I tell you about my two other husbands, Rosalie?\"\r\n\r\n\"Please do,\" said Rosalie. \"Only I\u2019m afraid they\u2019ll be a bit of a come-down after Mat.\"\r\n\r\n\"They certainly were. Their stories are what writers call an anti-climax\u2014I know plenty of big and learned words; I fooled you at first, didn\u2019t I, when I talked rough country words over killing the skunk\u2014and a good story should be told the other way about; the best should come last.\"\r\n\r\n\"You did fool me at first, Old lady. I thought for a little while you were only a little whizzened up-country woman, but I knew you were kind, and I must have been sent to you.\"\r\n\r\n\"Well, I was home and a widow at twenty-nine, and it seemed I\u2019d lived all my life. I was very well off too, for I had a third of the Arethusa, Mat\u2019s savings and his insurance money. But soon I was bored to tears, for the life of my home village, after what I\u2019d seen and enjoyed and suffered, seemed dull and trifling. For five years I lived with father and mother till they died within a month of one another, and I was left alone in the big house on the hill. Five years of boredom and stagnation, I can tell you, and I missed Mat more every day and the thrill of excitement on the sea, and I could see no way of escape.\r\n\r\n\u201cSo I married Charlie Chisolm. He had a store and was comfortably off and I\u2019d known him ever since he was a boy. He was fat and good-natured, always laughing; good company but no good as a lover; he never wanted me that way at all.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe never asked me to marry him, perhaps I decided and suggested it to him. He just said one day, in a kind of joking way, as we were talking on the bridge; \u2018You\u2019re lonely Kitty. You\u2019re well off, and I\u2019m pretty well off too. Why don\u2019t we hook up and join fortunes?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u201c \u2018Charlie,\u2019 I said, to him, \u2018I don't love you at all, you know I couldn\u2019t really love anyone after Mat.'\r\n\r\n\u201c \u2018Sure, Kitty,\u2019 said he, \u2018I understand that, but we\u2019ve always been good friends and had fun together.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u201c \u2018I\u2019II do it Charlie,\u2019 said I, \u2018if you\u2019ll move me away from this pinch\u00ading small-talk little village, if you\u2019ll move to the University town near the sea.\u2019 For I was not only bored with village life but tired of the little river, and the hills pressed in and cramped me. I wanted to be near a great library and listen to some talk by some people who understood that our world was only a little planet circling round a second-rate star and more than six thousand years old.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe agreed and sold out his business in the village, and we moved away to the town I had suggested. Really, I married Charlie because I needed company, and wanted to get away. There were some things I liked about him. I could depend on him, he was no liar, he was industrious and liked to get up at the crack of dawn\u2014you'd expect a fat man to be lazy, wouldn't you\u2014and he had a passion, not for women, but a passion just the same. People with a passion for something, whose minds are set one way, are the interesting people in the world.\"\r\n\r\n\"What was Charlie's passion?\" asked Rosalie.\r\n\r\n\"Guess.\"\r\n\r\n\"Liquor?\"\r\n\r\n\"No.\"\r\n\r\n\"Gambling?\"\r\n\r\n\"No and he never caught a fish or built anything in all his life.\"\r\n\r\n\"Horses?\" asked Rosalie, remembering Johnny Allen.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe was too fat to ever mount a horse; he hardly knew one end of a horse from the other. And when we talked of ships and boats, he was a dead loss, he never could remember which end the bow-sprit was on.\"\r\n\r\n\u201cI give up,\u201d said Rosalie, \"You see I don't know so much about the world yet.\"\r\n\r\n\u201cWell, his passion was trading. He had a passion moving about and trading anything; he always wanted to try his wits against somebody else and he was a keen one. He always had a store with reliable clerks, middle-aged men, that he could trust and he always made money. But that wasn't enough, he had to be on the road early and late in his big red truck, and his delight and was to haul a load of wood to some place where there was a scarcity, trade it off for a load of fish, sell that, and then carry a ton of potatoes from somewhere to somewhere else. That was his flair, trading.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe travelled along the roads for a hundred miles to and fro buying and selling. He had hardly any general knowledge at all. Julius Caesar, Cleopatra and Napoleon were all Jim Spinks to him, but he was kind, laughing and generous. HHHe always brought back funny stories from the road, roared with laughter at his own jokes, and let me alone. I spent those years pretty well for I read every day in the great library and listened to plenty of lectures, and learned all I could about mathematics, science, the stars and the races of men. I even learned to look through a micro\u00adscope, Rosalie, and see the little world, for you must know, my dear, that there\u2019s the great universe of the stars and then innumerable little hidden universes so tiny that most people are not aware of them at all.\u201d\r\n\r\n\"Oh, Little Old Lady,\" said Rosalie \"I\u2019ll never be wise like you,\"\r\n\r\n\"I always had a thirst for learning. Charlie used to laugh at me and tease me good-naturedly; all he wanted was to get a load of spuds from a farmer and to lug them to some rocky place where fishermen lived, and where potatoes didn't grow. Once I said to him, \u2018Charlie, what's your principle in trading?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u201c \u2018It\u2019s very simple,\u2019 said he, \u2018I buy as low as I can and sell as high\r\n\r\nas I can.'\r\n\r\n\u201cHe never pretended, you see, he was just a good business man. That's how the business world gets on, by buying low and selling high. \u2018You see\u2019 he explained, \u2018I always have more knowledge of markets than the fellow I'm buying from or selling to, and that's why I get on. I love to make money, Kitty. People are great fools about buying. The ordinary person thinks an article is no good unless it\u2019s got a high price.'\r\n\r\n\u201cHe had a natural genius for buying, and just before Christmas he used to go over to Boston and buy trinkets for the Christmas trade in his stores, for after we married he had a chain of little stores. Once he told me he got a bargain in good neckties that were a little out of fashion; five hundred of them at fifteen cents a piece. He had them put in the windows of his stores and marked them thirty cents. None of them sold. He took them down, put them away for a month, and showed them again in the windows, this time marked one dollar and a quarter. They sold like hot cakes.\r\n\r\n\u201cI couldn't help but be amused at Charlie's tricks, he was good-natured, full of smiles, and in ten years we never quarreled\u2014that was because I never loved him. You always quarrel at times with those you love or care about intensely. I used to often pitch into Mat because I loved him so.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey were ten comfortable but rather gray years that I spent with Charlie. He had a bad heart, and one day they found his truck by the roadside, fifty bushels of potatoes aboard, and Charlie smiling but dead, holding fast to the wheel. Poor Charlie, he was a good soul.\r\n\r\n\u201cSo here I was again a widow at thirty-nine, richer than ever and with thirty-one years to live in the normal span.\r\n\r\n\u201cLonely again I was, and that's why I married the preacher, that's why I live here, in this little yellow house, that's why the church by the gate has a scorched and twisted tower.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe taught in the college, and was by way of being a scholar and that attracted me, and I was sorry for him, for he was in many ways a child. He was a tall, gaunt man with a wandering eye, a little older than I, and he had a passion too, and that was to Christianize the whole world in one generation.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe decided to give up his teaching and wanted to be a kind of missionary preacher and live among the poorest people. That was all right and an idea clean out of the New Testament.\r\n\r\n\u201c \u2018Very well,\u2019 said I, \u2018I\u2019II try anything once; we\u2019ll see if it works.\u2019 So we came to this poor settlement. He wanted to be a good man but he was really very lazy and sensual. He\u2019d taught so long that he was all theory that he never could apply.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe never had any sense of saving up for a great event. Every night he was after me and when he had finished as a lover, instead of lying quiet and breathing in great breaths of peace and contentment, he\u2019d begin to groan and call upon God and say, 'I am not a man of God; I am a carnal man and love the things of the flesh.\u2019 \u2018Never mind,\u2019 I used to say to him. \u2018Be happy, that\u2019s the way God has made men and women and the whole of creation. There\u2019s no harm in that. Doesn\u2019t the Bible say \u2018Be fruitful and multiply,\u2019 \u2018It\u2019s only pure pleasure.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u201cBut he\u2019d groan and call upon God, until his mind changed and like Oliver Twist, he was asking for more.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis was indeed a poor lonely circuit, and truly I soon tired of my bargain. I don\u2019t know what I should have done but for my books\u2014I\u2019d bought a great many by this time, they\u2019re all stored away in the attic, my eyes are dim now for reading\u2014and the restless sea that washed our shore.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe thought by hard labour and living among the very poor he could conquer what he called his carnal desires, that it seemed had pestered him all his life. But I was still pretty and well-formed at forty-two, and poor man, he had his work cut out for him.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe tried hard to labour, to tend a garden, to cut wood and haul kelp and eel-grass like the others, but he was really bone-lazy, and soon tired of labour. That\u2019s half the trouble with preachers, they\u2019re lazy and don\u2019t have enough to do. He really loved to pray and groan and call upon the Lord, for the sins of this ungracious generation. He\u2019d never lived among sailor-men, nor knew their ways as I had. He used to sit by his study window, that looked out over the sea to the big island, and there compose strange complicated sermons full of high-sounding words. At first, he used to call on the fisher people and sit and chat with them as they mended their nets or overhauled trawls, but after a while he tired of that, because as he said, they were carnal and worldly. \u2018They understand nothing of the life of the spirit, he used to say.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhen he was young he had planned to be a medical missionary, and go forth to carry the cross to the Chinese or Malays or Zulus, races that he knew nothing about. I should have liked to have seen him converting Benguela. However, he\u2019d picked up some slight knowledge of drugs, and as half the fishermen and members of their families had asthma, he set himself to cure them. \u2018God,\u2019 he said, \u2018has revealed to me a magic formula in a dream,\u2019 and he mixed up his foul-smelling medicine in a wash-tub in the cellar. I don\u2019t know what he put in it but he certainly achieved the world\u2019s worst stink. Skunks were pleasant perfumes compared to his asthma cure. Some of the drugs were expensive, five or six dollars a pound, but that didn\u2019t matter for I was rich, and looked well after my money, and really treated him as if he were a child with a toy. Asafoetida, I remember, was one drug he used. I tell you, Rosalie, that the days of the medicine-man, faith-healer and witch-doctor are over, though many people don't know it. We\u2019re coming in to the age of science and knowledge. Do you know that, Rosalie?\"\r\n\r\n\"Not very well,\" said Rosalie. \"You see I was brought up on charms, candles and miracles.\"\r\n\r\n\"In the middle ages, religion and the finest knowledge were one. Now ever since men found the earth was not the centre, religion has lagged behind. Learning and religion are far apart now; the parsons had better hop to it, for the world can\u2019t afford to lose any remnant of saintliness.\"\r\n\r\n\"Can we be religious and read great books and know science, too?\" asked Rosalie, anxiously.\r\n\r\n\"Of course, the laws and rules and order of science are the thoughts of God.\r\n\r\n\u201cPoor Eric, that was his name, poor feckless man with a feckless name\u2014don\u2019t ever name a child Eric, Rosalie.\r\n\r\n\u201cEric mixed and stirred and mixed again his evil-smelling purple medicine, and carried it about to the fisher people. He used to get raging wild with them if they didn\u2019t respond, and get well after two bottles of God\u2019s Formula. And do you know, I believe some did get better through sheer fright of his rolling hypnotic eye. The mind has a great effect on the body and even the best doctor can\u2019t cure a patient that\u2019s determined to die. He mixed and mixed and filled the house with foul smells, certainly God had a strange taste in odours. Then when his medicines began to fail, he suddenly tired of the whole business, and began to preach wilder and wilder sermons and rail at the people, and shout that a sacrifice was necessary, perhaps a human sacrifice, till people were quite afraid of him. He began to get queerer and queerer. One evening he rushed into my sitting room, his eyes all dilated and said in an excited voice, \u2018Did you see the little black man that ran in here? He was about that high,\u2019 and he held his hand a foot from the ground. \u2018No,\u2019 I said, \u2018no black men of that height have come in here.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u201c \u2018Well\u2019 he said, \u2018he certainly left my study and popped in your door, Kitty\u2019\u2014this very sternly\u2014\u2018you don\u2019t have m n about the house do you?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u201c \u2018None but you\u2019, I said.\r\n\r\n\u201cFor an hour he hunted, the house from attic to cellar for that little dark man a foot and a half high. I was not in the least afraid; I had passed too many dangers to fear a half-mad parson, but I got out one of the Arethusa revolvers, oiled and loaded it and put it in a drawer by my bed\u00adside. There had been a good deal of talk of human sacrifice being necessary to cure the world and please an angry God, and I didn\u2019t propose to be the lamb led to the sacrificial altar.\u201d\r\n\r\n\"Oh, Old Lady,\u201d said Rosalie, \"I should have been afraid and run\r\n\r\naway.\u201d\r\n\r\n\"How would I be afraid after I\u2019d brought the Arethusa home with a driveling coward mate and a tricky crew? Not me!\r\n\r\n\u201cHe used to keep his sermons tied up in bundles, and one day I noticed that he was beginning to carry these sermon bundles down to the church.\r\n\r\n\u201c \u2018What are you doing?\u2019 I asked him.\r\n\r\n\u201c \u2018I\u2019m storing my sermons in God\u2019s house,\u2019 he replied.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe got queerer and queerer, but still I had no fear of him. He was always gentle with me, but he kept calling upon God in a loud voice for a sacrifice, and he seemed possessed by a spirit like a demon of evil. Then one day he carried to the church at the foot of the lane his last bundle of sermons and a can of oil. He said, \u2018I\u2019m going to fill the lamps of the sanctuary.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u201cA half hour after he left, the cry went up that the church was on fire, and the men of the neighbourhood rushed in with buckets and ladders. The tide was high and they formed a bucket-line to the shore, and got the fire out when the church was half-burnt. But Eric was charred and dead; he had piled chairs, pews and his bundles of sermons all around him, thrown oil over all and his own clothing. That was the end of Eric, half-mad, of course. A fanatical passion for the forms of any religion\u2014not goodness, not saintli\u00adness\u2014is the worst kind of passion, and has caused half the trouble in the world.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe people wanted that church no more; they were afraid of it. So I bought from them church and land and manse, and let the half-burnt stand with its crooked, twisted tower pointing awry at the sky, not fair on the zenith, for it seemed a fitting memorial to him.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat was thirty years ago; I was forty-six then and I seemed to have come to a time in my\u00ad life when my whole nature changed. I was well-off and I wanted no more men; three I had had and three had met tragic death. Perhaps I was fatal to men; perhaps I too was \u2018the face that sunk a thousand ships.\u2019 At any rate, I was now content to be alone and work and read and live far from people. I had no relatives and I was half-forgotten in the village of my birth, moreover I could not return and live among smug village people. Even at forty-six most of your contemporaries who have been friends have died or have disappeared. A woman can have but one great lover, Rosalie, perhaps two lesser ones, but certainly not more than that. I have not been lonely here, only lately, only in the last two or three years, I have craved company and I have been waiting for you to come.\"\r\n\r\n\"Perhaps I'll stay always,\" said Rosalie.\r\n\r\n\u201cNo, no, I have still a thousand stories to tell you but May will move you on\r\n\r\n\u201cRummy?\u201d said the old lady, \u201cgin or Oklahoma?\u201d\r\n\r\n\"Gin\", laughed Rosalie.\r\n\r\nThere was an exchange of twenty cents that night before they put out the lights.","rendered":"

It was a blustery night in March when Rosalie and the little old lady came to the end of \u201cLes Miserables\u201d in that passage beautiful in its simplicity, that describes the last resting place of Jean Valjean.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is, in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, in the neigh\u00adborhood of the Potter\u2019s field, far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres, far from all those fantastic tombs, which display in the presence of eternity the hideous fashion of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, beneath a great yew on which the bind-weed climbs, among the dog-grass and the mosses, a stone. This stone is exempt no more than the rest from the leprosy of time, from the mould, the lichen, and the droppings of birds. The air turns it black, the water green. It is near no path, and people do not like to go in that direction, because the grass is high, and they would wet their feet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come out. There is, all about, a rustling of wild oats. In the Spring linnets sing in the tree.<\/em><\/p>\n

The stone is entirely blank. The only thought in cutting it, was of the essentials of the grave, and there was no other care, than to make the stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man. No name can be read there. Only many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines, which have gradually become illegible under the rain and the dust, and which are probably effaced;<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Il dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien etrange,<\/em><\/p>\n

Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n’eut plus son ange.<\/em><\/p>\n

La chose simplement d’elle-mene arriva,<\/em><\/p>\n

Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s\u2019en va.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI’m sorry to come to the end of this wonderful book,\u201d said Rosalie. \u201cIt will always be my book, perhaps it is more wonderful than \u201cDon Quixote\u201d. I suppose it has to come to an end with the death of the hero.”<\/p>\n

“No great book ever comes to an end, it simply pauses with death or marriage. It cannot end; even when the hero and other chief characters are gone, it flows on in the lesser people in it. You always want more; you are satisfied and yet hungry.”<\/p>\n

“And I suppose,” said Rosalie, “it flows on in people’s minds too. It will always flow on in mine.”<\/p>\n

“A great book, flows on like a big river. It seems to be lost in the sea, but fifty miles off shore you can dip up a good bucket of water from the Amazon, a little brackish perhaps but still fresh water. Then the burning sun catches up the waters from the sea, and the clouds carry them back to the mountain streams, and the river of great and lovely thoughts flow again through the minds and hearts of other, inspired writers.”<\/p>\n

“I’ve learned a lot from you Old Lady,” said Rosalie, “I think you’re better than a year in college. I never had anyone talk to me about great books before.”<\/p>\n

“You will only fully understand them when you\u2019ve lived your life. My life on the infinite sea, my ten years of learning and practicing\u2014for that’s the only way one really learns\u2014taught me all I know. I’ve had many years to reflect and hash it all over.”<\/p>\n

“How could you ever bear to marry again after you\u2019d had Mat?” Asked Rosalie, “How could you bear it, Little Old Lady?”<\/p>\n

“Shall I tell you about my two other husbands, Rosalie?”<\/p>\n

“Please do,” said Rosalie. “Only I\u2019m afraid they\u2019ll be a bit of a come-down after Mat.”<\/p>\n

“They certainly were. Their stories are what writers call an anti-climax\u2014I know plenty of big and learned words; I fooled you at first, didn\u2019t I, when I talked rough country words over killing the skunk\u2014and a good story should be told the other way about; the best should come last.”<\/p>\n

“You did fool me at first, Old lady. I thought for a little while you were only a little whizzened up-country woman, but I knew you were kind, and I must have been sent to you.”<\/p>\n

“Well, I was home and a widow at twenty-nine, and it seemed I\u2019d lived all my life. I was very well off too, for I had a third of the Arethusa, Mat\u2019s savings and his insurance money. But soon I was bored to tears, for the life of my home village, after what I\u2019d seen and enjoyed and suffered, seemed dull and trifling. For five years I lived with father and mother till they died within a month of one another, and I was left alone in the big house on the hill. Five years of boredom and stagnation, I can tell you, and I missed Mat more every day and the thrill of excitement on the sea, and I could see no way of escape.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I married Charlie Chisolm. He had a store and was comfortably off and I\u2019d known him ever since he was a boy. He was fat and good-natured, always laughing; good company but no good as a lover; he never wanted me that way at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe never asked me to marry him, perhaps I decided and suggested it to him. He just said one day, in a kind of joking way, as we were talking on the bridge; \u2018You\u2019re lonely Kitty. You\u2019re well off, and I\u2019m pretty well off too. Why don\u2019t we hook up and join fortunes?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018Charlie,\u2019 I said, to him, \u2018I don’t love you at all, you know I couldn\u2019t really love anyone after Mat.’<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018Sure, Kitty,\u2019 said he, \u2018I understand that, but we\u2019ve always been good friends and had fun together.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018I\u2019II do it Charlie,\u2019 said I, \u2018if you\u2019ll move me away from this pinch\u00ading small-talk little village, if you\u2019ll move to the University town near the sea.\u2019 For I was not only bored with village life but tired of the little river, and the hills pressed in and cramped me. I wanted to be near a great library and listen to some talk by some people who understood that our world was only a little planet circling round a second-rate star and more than six thousand years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe agreed and sold out his business in the village, and we moved away to the town I had suggested. Really, I married Charlie because I needed company, and wanted to get away. There were some things I liked about him. I could depend on him, he was no liar, he was industrious and liked to get up at the crack of dawn\u2014you’d expect a fat man to be lazy, wouldn’t you\u2014and he had a passion, not for women, but a passion just the same. People with a passion for something, whose minds are set one way, are the interesting people in the world.”<\/p>\n

“What was Charlie’s passion?” asked Rosalie.<\/p>\n

“Guess.”<\/p>\n

“Liquor?”<\/p>\n

“No.”<\/p>\n

“Gambling?”<\/p>\n

“No and he never caught a fish or built anything in all his life.”<\/p>\n

“Horses?” asked Rosalie, remembering Johnny Allen.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was too fat to ever mount a horse; he hardly knew one end of a horse from the other. And when we talked of ships and boats, he was a dead loss, he never could remember which end the bow-sprit was on.”<\/p>\n

\u201cI give up,\u201d said Rosalie, “You see I don’t know so much about the world yet.”<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, his passion was trading. He had a passion moving about and trading anything; he always wanted to try his wits against somebody else and he was a keen one. He always had a store with reliable clerks, middle-aged men, that he could trust and he always made money. But that wasn’t enough, he had to be on the road early and late in his big red truck, and his delight and was to haul a load of wood to some place where there was a scarcity, trade it off for a load of fish, sell that, and then carry a ton of potatoes from somewhere to somewhere else. That was his flair, trading.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe travelled along the roads for a hundred miles to and fro buying and selling. He had hardly any general knowledge at all. Julius Caesar, Cleopatra and Napoleon were all Jim Spinks to him, but he was kind, laughing and generous. HHHe always brought back funny stories from the road, roared with laughter at his own jokes, and let me alone. I spent those years pretty well for I read every day in the great library and listened to plenty of lectures, and learned all I could about mathematics, science, the stars and the races of men. I even learned to look through a micro\u00adscope, Rosalie, and see the little world, for you must know, my dear, that there\u2019s the great universe of the stars and then innumerable little hidden universes so tiny that most people are not aware of them at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Oh, Little Old Lady,” said Rosalie “I\u2019ll never be wise like you,”<\/p>\n

“I always had a thirst for learning. Charlie used to laugh at me and tease me good-naturedly; all he wanted was to get a load of spuds from a farmer and to lug them to some rocky place where fishermen lived, and where potatoes didn’t grow. Once I said to him, \u2018Charlie, what’s your principle in trading?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018It\u2019s very simple,\u2019 said he, \u2018I buy as low as I can and sell as high<\/p>\n

as I can.’<\/p>\n

\u201cHe never pretended, you see, he was just a good business man. That’s how the business world gets on, by buying low and selling high. \u2018You see\u2019 he explained, \u2018I always have more knowledge of markets than the fellow I’m buying from or selling to, and that’s why I get on. I love to make money, Kitty. People are great fools about buying. The ordinary person thinks an article is no good unless it\u2019s got a high price.’<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had a natural genius for buying, and just before Christmas he used to go over to Boston and buy trinkets for the Christmas trade in his stores, for after we married he had a chain of little stores. Once he told me he got a bargain in good neckties that were a little out of fashion; five hundred of them at fifteen cents a piece. He had them put in the windows of his stores and marked them thirty cents. None of them sold. He took them down, put them away for a month, and showed them again in the windows, this time marked one dollar and a quarter. They sold like hot cakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn’t help but be amused at Charlie’s tricks, he was good-natured, full of smiles, and in ten years we never quarreled\u2014that was because I never loved him. You always quarrel at times with those you love or care about intensely. I used to often pitch into Mat because I loved him so.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were ten comfortable but rather gray years that I spent with Charlie. He had a bad heart, and one day they found his truck by the roadside, fifty bushels of potatoes aboard, and Charlie smiling but dead, holding fast to the wheel. Poor Charlie, he was a good soul.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo here I was again a widow at thirty-nine, richer than ever and with thirty-one years to live in the normal span.<\/p>\n

\u201cLonely again I was, and that’s why I married the preacher, that’s why I live here, in this little yellow house, that’s why the church by the gate has a scorched and twisted tower.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe taught in the college, and was by way of being a scholar and that attracted me, and I was sorry for him, for he was in many ways a child. He was a tall, gaunt man with a wandering eye, a little older than I, and he had a passion too, and that was to Christianize the whole world in one generation.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe decided to give up his teaching and wanted to be a kind of missionary preacher and live among the poorest people. That was all right and an idea clean out of the New Testament.<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018Very well,\u2019 said I, \u2018I\u2019II try anything once; we\u2019ll see if it works.\u2019 So we came to this poor settlement. He wanted to be a good man but he was really very lazy and sensual. He\u2019d taught so long that he was all theory that he never could apply.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe never had any sense of saving up for a great event. Every night he was after me and when he had finished as a lover, instead of lying quiet and breathing in great breaths of peace and contentment, he\u2019d begin to groan and call upon God and say, ‘I am not a man of God; I am a carnal man and love the things of the flesh.\u2019 \u2018Never mind,\u2019 I used to say to him. \u2018Be happy, that\u2019s the way God has made men and women and the whole of creation. There\u2019s no harm in that. Doesn\u2019t the Bible say \u2018Be fruitful and multiply,\u2019 \u2018It\u2019s only pure pleasure.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he\u2019d groan and call upon God, until his mind changed and like Oliver Twist, he was asking for more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was indeed a poor lonely circuit, and truly I soon tired of my bargain. I don\u2019t know what I should have done but for my books\u2014I\u2019d bought a great many by this time, they\u2019re all stored away in the attic, my eyes are dim now for reading\u2014and the restless sea that washed our shore.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe thought by hard labour and living among the very poor he could conquer what he called his carnal desires, that it seemed had pestered him all his life. But I was still pretty and well-formed at forty-two, and poor man, he had his work cut out for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe tried hard to labour, to tend a garden, to cut wood and haul kelp and eel-grass like the others, but he was really bone-lazy, and soon tired of labour. That\u2019s half the trouble with preachers, they\u2019re lazy and don\u2019t have enough to do. He really loved to pray and groan and call upon the Lord, for the sins of this ungracious generation. He\u2019d never lived among sailor-men, nor knew their ways as I had. He used to sit by his study window, that looked out over the sea to the big island, and there compose strange complicated sermons full of high-sounding words. At first, he used to call on the fisher people and sit and chat with them as they mended their nets or overhauled trawls, but after a while he tired of that, because as he said, they were carnal and worldly. \u2018They understand nothing of the life of the spirit, he used to say.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he was young he had planned to be a medical missionary, and go forth to carry the cross to the Chinese or Malays or Zulus, races that he knew nothing about. I should have liked to have seen him converting Benguela. However, he\u2019d picked up some slight knowledge of drugs, and as half the fishermen and members of their families had asthma, he set himself to cure them. \u2018God,\u2019 he said, \u2018has revealed to me a magic formula in a dream,\u2019 and he mixed up his foul-smelling medicine in a wash-tub in the cellar. I don\u2019t know what he put in it but he certainly achieved the world\u2019s worst stink. Skunks were pleasant perfumes compared to his asthma cure. Some of the drugs were expensive, five or six dollars a pound, but that didn\u2019t matter for I was rich, and looked well after my money, and really treated him as if he were a child with a toy. Asafoetida, I remember, was one drug he used. I tell you, Rosalie, that the days of the medicine-man, faith-healer and witch-doctor are over, though many people don’t know it. We\u2019re coming in to the age of science and knowledge. Do you know that, Rosalie?”<\/p>\n

“Not very well,” said Rosalie. “You see I was brought up on charms, candles and miracles.”<\/p>\n

“In the middle ages, religion and the finest knowledge were one. Now ever since men found the earth was not the centre, religion has lagged behind. Learning and religion are far apart now; the parsons had better hop to it, for the world can\u2019t afford to lose any remnant of saintliness.”<\/p>\n

“Can we be religious and read great books and know science, too?” asked Rosalie, anxiously.<\/p>\n

“Of course, the laws and rules and order of science are the thoughts of God.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoor Eric, that was his name, poor feckless man with a feckless name\u2014don\u2019t ever name a child Eric, Rosalie.<\/p>\n

\u201cEric mixed and stirred and mixed again his evil-smelling purple medicine, and carried it about to the fisher people. He used to get raging wild with them if they didn\u2019t respond, and get well after two bottles of God\u2019s Formula. And do you know, I believe some did get better through sheer fright of his rolling hypnotic eye. The mind has a great effect on the body and even the best doctor can\u2019t cure a patient that\u2019s determined to die. He mixed and mixed and filled the house with foul smells, certainly God had a strange taste in odours. Then when his medicines began to fail, he suddenly tired of the whole business, and began to preach wilder and wilder sermons and rail at the people, and shout that a sacrifice was necessary, perhaps a human sacrifice, till people were quite afraid of him. He began to get queerer and queerer. One evening he rushed into my sitting room, his eyes all dilated and said in an excited voice, \u2018Did you see the little black man that ran in here? He was about that high,\u2019 and he held his hand a foot from the ground. \u2018No,\u2019 I said, \u2018no black men of that height have come in here.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018Well\u2019 he said, \u2018he certainly left my study and popped in your door, Kitty\u2019\u2014this very sternly\u2014\u2018you don\u2019t have m n about the house do you?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018None but you\u2019, I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor an hour he hunted, the house from attic to cellar for that little dark man a foot and a half high. I was not in the least afraid; I had passed too many dangers to fear a half-mad parson, but I got out one of the Arethusa revolvers, oiled and loaded it and put it in a drawer by my bed\u00adside. There had been a good deal of talk of human sacrifice being necessary to cure the world and please an angry God, and I didn\u2019t propose to be the lamb led to the sacrificial altar.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Oh, Old Lady,\u201d said Rosalie, “I should have been afraid and run<\/p>\n

away.\u201d<\/p>\n

“How would I be afraid after I\u2019d brought the Arethusa home with a driveling coward mate and a tricky crew? Not me!<\/p>\n

\u201cHe used to keep his sermons tied up in bundles, and one day I noticed that he was beginning to carry these sermon bundles down to the church.<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018What are you doing?\u2019 I asked him.<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018I\u2019m storing my sermons in God\u2019s house,\u2019 he replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe got queerer and queerer, but still I had no fear of him. He was always gentle with me, but he kept calling upon God in a loud voice for a sacrifice, and he seemed possessed by a spirit like a demon of evil. Then one day he carried to the church at the foot of the lane his last bundle of sermons and a can of oil. He said, \u2018I\u2019m going to fill the lamps of the sanctuary.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cA half hour after he left, the cry went up that the church was on fire, and the men of the neighbourhood rushed in with buckets and ladders. The tide was high and they formed a bucket-line to the shore, and got the fire out when the church was half-burnt. But Eric was charred and dead; he had piled chairs, pews and his bundles of sermons all around him, thrown oil over all and his own clothing. That was the end of Eric, half-mad, of course. A fanatical passion for the forms of any religion\u2014not goodness, not saintli\u00adness\u2014is the worst kind of passion, and has caused half the trouble in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people wanted that church no more; they were afraid of it. So I bought from them church and land and manse, and let the half-burnt stand with its crooked, twisted tower pointing awry at the sky, not fair on the zenith, for it seemed a fitting memorial to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was thirty years ago; I was forty-six then and I seemed to have come to a time in my\u00ad life when my whole nature changed. I was well-off and I wanted no more men; three I had had and three had met tragic death. Perhaps I was fatal to men; perhaps I too was \u2018the face that sunk a thousand ships.\u2019 At any rate, I was now content to be alone and work and read and live far from people. I had no relatives and I was half-forgotten in the village of my birth, moreover I could not return and live among smug village people. Even at forty-six most of your contemporaries who have been friends have died or have disappeared. A woman can have but one great lover, Rosalie, perhaps two lesser ones, but certainly not more than that. I have not been lonely here, only lately, only in the last two or three years, I have craved company and I have been waiting for you to come.”<\/p>\n

“Perhaps I’ll stay always,” said Rosalie.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no, I have still a thousand stories to tell you but May will move you on<\/p>\n

\u201cRummy?\u201d said the old lady, \u201cgin or Oklahoma?\u201d<\/p>\n

“Gin”, laughed Rosalie.<\/p>\n

There was an exchange of twenty cents that night before they put out the lights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"menu_order":13,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119,"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/109\/revisions\/119"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/109\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/rosalie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}