“Multiplying by two-digit numbers is not as difficult as it appears,” Rosalind said on Friday, the fifteenth of October, while chalking 23 x 871 upon the blackboard.
She turned and faced thirty dubious looks from nine- and ten-year-old faces.
“How many of you know how to add?”
All hands rose.
“And how to carry?”
Hands went up again.
“But of course you do!” She smiled. “We shall simply combine adding with multiplying, one step at a time. Why, you’ll soon be able to do this in your sleep.”
Her students laughed.
Rosalind taught mathematics first subject of the day, when the children’s minds were fresh, then went on to grammar, her least favorite, while hers was somewhat fresh. But she worked just as hard to make it interesting.
At lunch recess, she held the door and watched her students carry their pails down the steps. By calling back offenders to spend recess at their desks, it had taken her but a fortnight to train them not to bolt like cattle.
Teaching younger boys and girls of fishermen and shopkeepers and quarry workers was vastly different from teaching older girls from the upper class. But Rosalind had learned from Miss Beale the keys to discipline: preparedness and consistency. The rewards were great. She was learning family connections and finding her own place in Port Stilwell’s community.
Danny Fletcher sent her a wave from a group of schoolmates. She returned his wave, happy to see how sociable he was becoming. She gave Jude much credit for that, with his Saturday afternoon rounders games on the green. The solution he found for keeping his shop open was simple. Young Amos White was quite competent and delighted to earn extra wages. It mattered little to Jude that the occasional fish scale turned up upon a shelf or in the money box. This was a fishing village, after all.
On the seventeenth of October, Jude came to lunch after church. Mrs. Meeks, the new cook, served a decent grouse pie with turnips and mushrooms. Forty-three years old and widowed, with children and grandchildren in town, she was unlikely to leave for some hoity-toity restaurant in Exeter, as Mrs. Hooper had stated so eloquently of Coral Shipsey.
“Anyone care for a game of Twenty Questions after dessert?” Mother asked as Mrs. Deamer brought a compote of apples into the dining room.
“I was hoping Rosalind would go for a walk,” Jude said.
“You were?” Rosalind teased. “Have I offended you?”
He mugged a face at her. “A walk with me.”
“You know that’s not possible.” The six members of the school board had made it clear when they hired her that unmarried women teachers were to be chaperoned when appearing in public in the company of any non-family male. Not fair, considering how Noble Clark had courted with impunity, but her only choices were to teach, or to sit home and complain over the rules.
She had had a third choice, actually: Miss Beale had asked her to return to Cheltenham. Her mother was becoming involved in the community, was even on the committee to plan the Christmas pantomime. But Rosalind no longer wished to live with one foot in one life and another here.
Jude, with whom she would love to be sitting in the garden, unchaperoned, had much to do with that decision.
“Shall I come with you?” Mrs. Deamer asked.
Jude thanked her, and they set out later, Jinny exploring ahead, Mrs. Deamer in the middle so there would be not even a hint of impropriety. They made small talk until Jude came to a halt at the Bickle cottage.
“Mrs. Bickle’s son desires to sell. But I’d like your opinion.”
Rosalind eyed the crumbling stones, rotting wood, and weed-choked garden. “Whatever would you do with it?”
“Have it torn down and build another using the same stones, plus more from the quarry to make it larger. It’s in a good spot, close to the shop and school. The garden is well shaded and could be lovely.”
Close to the school . . .
“You should show her the garden,” Mrs. Deamer said. “I’ll wait.”
Rosalind gave her a suspicious look. What whispered conversation had occurred when she answered Jude’s knock? But Mrs. Deamer gave her a benign smile.
She glanced about. Cottagers were at Sunday dinner or resting. Apart from Mrs. Deamer, there were no witnesses to their picking their way through calf-high weeds with Jinny in the lead.
The garden was bigger than Rosalind would have supposed, surrounded by a lichen-covered wall crumbling in spots. The earth was packed and scattered with yellow leaves from a decent-sized plum tree. Beneath it, Jude smiled, took her hand, and got upon one knee.
“Jude?” She had known this moment was inevitable, but still, her heart raced.
Jinny trotted over with leaves clinging to her coat and nudged his free hand.
He laughed and rested that hand upon his dog’s head. “Will you marry us, Rosalind?”
She smiled, took a breath. “I will, Jude.”
“Thank you, my darling. You’ve made me a happy man.”
Getting to his feet, he removed his eyeglasses and kissed her, Jinny barking her approval.
Rosalind closed her eyes and relished being in his arms.
Thank you, Father. Thank you for nosebleeds and good men . . . and second opportunities.
At length, Jude stepped back and reached into his waistcoat pocket. The ring he brought out was gold, with an oval amethyst stone surrounded by seed pearls.
“I’ve wanted to show this to you since you first smiled at me with those half-moon eyes. My grandfather bought it in Bombay for my grandmother. She would have loved you. But if you would prefer a new one . . .”
“No. It’s beautiful.” She allowed him to slip it onto her third finger, at least to the second knuckle. “Oh dear. She had small hands.”
“We’ll take it to a jeweler in Exeter. But what of this place? Can you imagine living here when it’s rebuilt?”
“I can imagine that easily.”
They kissed again. “July? The cottage should be finished, and you would have the summer break for our honeymoon. I assume you’ll want to resume teaching?”
“Yes,” Rosalind answered. “But there won’t be enough time to journey to India unless I resign.”
His green eyes met hers. “India? If you’re unable to sit backward on a train, I fear such a journey would make you miserable.”
“A person should have more than one dream. I would love to explore the Continent with you. Wouldn’t you like to see Paris? Rome?”
“Very much,” she replied. “But are you certain you’ll not have regrets later?”
“I’ve come to realize I’ve romanticized India because of my family. But I carry them in my heart. Geography has nothing to do with that.”
She touched his clean-shaven face. “You’re a good man, Jude.”
“I hope so,” he said, smiling back at her. “But what do you say? If we packed lots of ginger biscuits, could you bear two to three hours on a Channel steamer?”
“Two to three hours? I can bear that.”
In front of the cottage again, Mrs. Deamer kissed Rosalind’s cheek. “Your mother will be delighted.”
“She wasn’t in on this?”
“I want to ask her formally,” Jude said. “After. It would have put her in an awkward position had you turned me down.”
You knew that wasn’t going to happen, Rosalind said to him with her eyes. She fingered the ring in her pocket on the return walk, too caught up in a wave of euphoria to add to the discussion of a European honeymoon.
“Thomas Cook tours are the best,” Mrs. Deamer was saying. “Tickets, currency exchanges, meals—they handle it all for you, yet allow some time for exploring on your own.”
When they reached the porch of the yellow cottage, Mrs. Deamer turned to say, “I’m flattered to be included in this happy occasion. But I’m going upstairs. It should be family now.”
Her mother sat upon the parlor sofa, knitting her fourth, perhaps fifth, blue blanket. “How was your walk?”
“Quite eventful,” Rosalind said.
Jude walked over to the side of the sofa and knelt.
Her mother set her knitting into her lap and smiled at each of them. “I expect you have something to say to me?”
“Rosalind has consented to be my wife, Mrs. Ward. May we have your blessing?”
With eyes shining, Mother replied, “You shall always have my blessing.”