Ch. 11: A Mere Interlude

CHAPTER I

The traveller in school-books, who vouched in dryest tones for the
fidelity to fact of the following narrative, used to add a ring of truth
to it by opening with a nicety of criticism on the heroine's personality.
People were wrong, he declared, when they surmised that Baptista Trewthen
was a young woman with scarcely emotions or character. There was nothing
in her to love, and nothing to hate--so ran the general opinion. That
she showed few positive qualities was true. The colours and tones which
changing events paint on the faces of active womankind were looked for in
vain upon hers. But still waters run deep; and no crisis had come in the
years of her early maidenhood to demonstrate what lay hidden within her,
like metal in a mine.

She was the daughter of a small farmer in St. Maria's, one of the Isles
of Lyonesse beyond Off-Wessex, who had spent a large sum, as there
understood, on her education, by sending her to the mainland for two
years. At nineteen she was entered at the Training College for Teachers,
and at twenty-one nominated to a school in the country, near Tor-upon-
Sea, whither she proceeded after the Christmas examination and holidays.

The months passed by from winter to spring and summer, and Baptista
applied herself to her new duties as best she could, till an uneventful
year had elapsed. Then an air of abstraction pervaded her bearing as she
walked to and fro, twice a day, and she showed the traits of a person who
had something on her mind. A widow, by name Mrs. Wace, in whose house
Baptista Trewthen had been provided with a sitting-room and bedroom till
the school-house should be built, noticed this change in her youthful
tenant's manner, and at last ventured to press her with a few questions.

'It has nothing to do with the place, nor with you,' said Miss Trewthen.

'Then it is the salary?'

'No, nor the salary.'

'Then it is something you have heard from home, my dear.'

Baptista was silent for a few moments. 'It is Mr. Heddegan,' she
murmured. 'Him they used to call David Heddegan before he got his
money.'

'And who is the Mr. Heddegan they used to call David?'

'An old bachelor at Giant's Town, St. Maria's, with no relations
whatever, who lives about a stone's throw from father's. When I was a
child he used to take me on his knee and say he'd marry me some day. Now
I am a woman the jest has turned earnest, and he is anxious to do it. And
father and mother says I can't do better than have him.'

'He's well off?'

'Yes--he's the richest man we know--as a friend and neighbour.'

'How much older did you say he was than yourself?'

'I didn't say. Twenty years at least.'

'And an unpleasant man in the