“We’ll put it behind us. Just get well again.”
As always, Lewis was astounded at the practicality of this woman he had had the good fortune to marry. He tried to follow her counsel, but during the weeks of his convalescence his mind would return to one nagging thought: someone was killing, wantonly and without consequence, and his own self-absorbed obstinacy had jeopardized the likelihood of ever finding out who it was.
Part IV
Bath 1841
I
It was evident to everyone, including Lewis himself, that he was not fit to ride a circuit in his present state and that it would be some time before he could return to it — if ever.
However, had he been able to choose a time in which to be an invalid, he could scarcely have picked better. The Methodist Episcopal Church had finally grown weary of wrangling with the Wesleyans, and the union had fallen apart. After years of labouring hard to keep the Episcopal discipline alive, the ranks of the faithful had been joined again by its main body of ministers. Lewis felt vindicated by this — he had felt from the beginning that the union was unwise, but the extent of the folly became all too evident as time went on. It was clear that although the Episcopals had arrived at the union with a substantial portion of property, they would leave with none of it. The Wesleyans intended to keep it all, and had ensured the legalities that would allow them to do so. This blow might have been devastating to any other denomination, but for the Methodist Episcopals it was merely another challenge. They had arrived in this colony with little more than a horse and a Bible and had built a congregation from the back of a saddle. If they must return to preaching in kitchens and dooryards, then so be it. The loss of the churches they had built rankled, but in the grander scheme of things these were merely material trappings and they would do without until they could rebuild.
Lewis felt more optimistic than he had in a long time, but he was still faced with some serious personal challenges. He needed to find something to do while he mended, something that was not too physically strenuous — he still had days when the fever flared and his hands shook — but that was absorbing enough to keep his mind active and his interest alive, not to mention providing some means of support for himself and his family.
According to Betsy, little had changed at the farm. He wondered briefly if he should go there and spend his time setting it right, but she suggested that it would only make matters worse.
“Maybe you landed Will with too much. If it were just he and Nabby, they’d have only themselves to sort out. I don’t think it helped that he had all the rest of us to try to please as well.”
“That wasn’t my original intention,” Lewis said. “I thought it would be easier for him that way, if he had help in the fields and in the house.”
“I know you meant it well,” she said. “It’s just that he didn’t take it well. I thought it was a good idea at the time, just as you did. I guess we were both wrong.”
Lewis was beginning to seriously wonder if he had any good judgment at all when it came to his family. This time he would listen to Betsy and stay out of it.
In the end, he went back to one of his old professions, that of schoolteacher. He even went back to his old school in Bath. Upon his inquiry, he had been told that the trustees were looking for a man with experience who wasn’t afraid to use the leather on the older boys who got rowdy when they were forced to attend. The previous schoolmaster had left quite suddenly. He was a young and rather frail-looking man, marked as a victim as soon as he started. The boys reduced him to tears one day when during recess they locked him in the outhouse and then tipped it over. Lewis would need to start right away, as the masterless school had some months to run until the summer break, and the trustees needed the students’ fees to maintain the building. The situation would do for a time, until he was well, but if he was going to be settled he was determined to have his wife with him.
When they returned to the farm, Lewis managed to get Will alone while Betsy and Luke were packing up for the move. “Look, boy, I understand that you want to stand by your wife, and I can admire that, but you need to take a firmer hand here. I’ll give you a year on your own. If you haven’t sorted things out by then, there’s no help for it, I’ll have to give up the farm and you’ll be on your own. I can send you no money, for a schoolmaster’s pay is barely enough to keep my own household.”
He could only hope that Will would reflect on his words, and take some action that would remedy things. Perhaps, given time and space, he and Nabby could make it work.
Lewis had just enough money to move their things to Bath, though their household goods were far fewer in number than they had been, having left a great many useful items and much of the furniture behind. He had found a tiny house that would accommodate them without much expense and which would be easy for Betsy to keep. Martha was big enough now to run and fetch, a small help at least. She remained an active, bubbly little girl who often made him laugh, and intensified his recollections of her mother. Luke came with them. He, too, had had enough of his older brother and his wife. The boy quickly found after-school work at the livery stable and willingly brought his entire wages home to his mother. Moses seemed quite happy at the tannery in Picton and, when informed of the new family arrangements, opted to stay where he was. He was courting a girl, Lewis suspected, figuring that before long he would be attending, maybe even officiating, at another wedding. He knew that this middle son would do nothing without a great deal of consideration and forethought and would make a success of anything he turned his hand to. He need not worry about Moses.
It felt odd to be in the classroom at Bath again. It didn’t seem so long ago that he had shepherded small children with slates in hand into a crowd in the front row, or chided one of the bigger boys at the back who had neglected to shovel the path or keep the stove filled with wood. But when he stopped to reflect, he counted back twenty-five years to a time in his life before he had a wife, a time before he had taken up his land grant. It was strange to be a teacher again, to attempt to pound a few facts into obtuse heads while forever on the lookout for mischief in another part of the room. After the first few days he settled in and found he still enjoyed it. The older boys who had been so problematic for the previous instructor took one look at their new teacher and decided not to try their luck. The days proceeded smoothly from there.
As always, he found the most eager pupils to be the girls, especially the small ones who had not yet realized that their destinies were, by and large, tied up with children and household occupations. Their minds were quicker than the boys’ and they worked harder. He wondered, not for the first time, whether or not their quick minds were wasted by so limiting their opportunities.
Some of the parents sent their girls for only a short time, pleading lack of money or the need of help at home. The same considerations applied to the boys, and often they would be absent for the entire harvest, but they would be sent back sooner than their sisters. When only some of the children in a family could be schooled, it was always the boys. They were future breadwinners, after all, and any sacrifice was made for them.
Some of the parents were dubious about the benefits of educating girls at all.
“I suppose they need to know how to do sums and read a little bit,” one of them said. “But beyond that, what’s the point? It’s not like they’re going to do anything but have babies, is it?”
Lewis thought of Eliza Barnes, who had preached to thousands and influenced so many lives, whose voice had been silenced by the mere fact of her marriage. And, surprisingly, of Kate Johnston, who had taken matters into her own hands and spirited her father out of a jail cell.
