The Schoolmaster's Letters

"The Schoolmaster's Letters" by Lucy Maud Montgomery is a charming collection of correspondence written by a schoolmaster in a small community. Through his letters, the schoolmaster shares his observations about life, education, and the quirky characters in his village, blending humor with poignant reflections. The book captures Montgomery's signature warmth and keen insight into human nature, showcasing her deep appreciation for the rhythms of rural life and the transformative power of teaching. It offers readers a glimpse into a bygone era, filled with both lighthearted anecdotes and thoughtful commentary on the challenges and joys of community and education.

• Short story

								
At sunset the schoolmaster went up to his room to write a letter to
her. He always wrote to her at the same time--when the red wave of the
sunset, flaming over the sea, surged in at the little curtainless
window and flowed over the pages he wrote on. The light was rose-red
and imperial and spiritual, like his love for her, and seemed almost
to dye the words of the letters in its own splendid hues--the letters
to her which she never was to see, whose words her eyes never were to
read, and whose love and golden fancy and rainbow dreams never were to
be so much as known by her. And it was because she never was to see
them that he dared to write them, straight out of his full heart,
taking the exquisite pleasure of telling her what he never could
permit himself to tell her face to face. Every evening he wrote thus
to her, and the hour so spent glorified the entire day. The rest of
the hours--all the other hours of the commonplace day--he was merely a
poor schoolmaster with a long struggle before him, one who might not
lift his eyes to gaze on a star. But at this hour he was her equal,
meeting her soul to soul, telling out as a man might all his great
love for her, and wearing the jewel of it on his brow. What wonder
indeed that the precious hour which made him a king, crowned with a
mighty and unselfish passion, was above all things sacred to him? And
doubly sacred when, as tonight, it followed upon an hour spent with
her? Its mingled delight and pain were almost more than he could bear.

He went through the kitchen and the hall and up the narrow staircase
with a glory in his eyes that thus were held from seeing his sordid
surroundings. Link Houseman, sprawled out on the platform before the
kitchen door, saw him pass with that rapt face, and chuckled. Link was
ill enough to look at any time, with his sharp, freckled features and
foxy eyes. When he chuckled his face was that of an unholy imp.

But the schoolmaster took no heed of him. Neither did he heed the girl
whom he met in the hall. Her handsome, sullen face flushed crimson
under the sting of his utter disregard, and her black eyes followed
him up the stairs with a look that was not good to see.

"Sis," whispered Link piercingly, "come out here! I've got a joke to
tell you, something about the master and his girl. You ain't to let on
to him you know, though. I found it out last night when he was off to
the shore. That old key of Uncle Jim's was just the thing. He's a
softy, and no mistake."

       *       *       *       *       *

Upstairs in his little room, the schoolmaster was writing his letter.
The room was as bare and graceless as all the other rooms of the
farmhouse where he had boarded during his term of teaching; but it
looked out on the sea, and was hung with such priceless tapestry of
his iris dreams and visions that it was to him an apartment in a royal
palace. From it he gazed afar on bays that were like great cups of
sapphire brimming over with ruby wine for gods to drain, on headlands
that were like amethyst, on wide sweeps of sea that were blue and far
and mysterious; and ever the moan and call of the ocean's heart came
up to his heart as of one great, hopeless love and longing crying out
to another love and longing, as great and hopeless. And here, in the
rose-radiance of the sunset, with the sea-music in the dim air, he
wrote his letter to her.

    My Lady: How beautiful it is to think that there is nothing to
    prevent my loving you! There is much--everything--to prevent
    me from telling you that I love you. But nothing has any right
    to come between my heart and its own; it is permitted to love
    you forever and ever and serve and reverence you in secret and
    silence. For so much, dear, I thank life, even though the
    price of the permission must always be the secret and the
    silence.

    I have just come from you, my lady. Your voice is still in my
    ears; your eyes are still looking into mine, gravely yet half
    smilingly, sweetly yet half provokingly. Oh, how dear and
    human and girlish and queenly you are--half saint and half
    very womanly woman! And how I love you with all there is of me
    to love--heart and soul and brain, every fibre of body and
    spirit thrilling to the wonder and marvel and miracle of it!
    You do not know it, my sweet, and you must never know it. You
    would not even wish to know it, for I am nothing to you but
    one of many friends, coming into your life briefly and passing
    out of it, of no more account to you than a sunshiny hour, a
    bird's song, a bursting bud in your garden. But the hour and
    the bird and the flower gave you a little delight in their
    turn, and when you remembered them once before forgetting,
    that was their reward and blessing. That is all I ask, dear
    lady, and I ask that only in my own heart. I am content to
    love you and be forgotten. It is sweeter to love you and be
    forgotten than it would be to love any other woman and live in
    her lifelong remembrance: so humble has love made me, sweet,
    so great is my sense of my own unworthiness.

    Yet love must find expression in some fashion, dear, else it
    is only pain, and hence these letters to you which you will
    never read. I put all my heart into them; they are the best
    and highest of me, the buds of a love that can never bloom
    openly in the sunshine of your life. I weave a chaplet of
    them, dear, and crown you with it. They will never fade, for
    such love is eternal.

    It is a whole summer since I first met you. I had been waiting
    for you all my life before and did not know it. But I knew it
    when you came and brought with you a sense of completion and
    fulfilment. This has been the precious year of my life, the
    turning-point to which all things past tended and all things
    future must look back. Oh, my dear, I thank you for this year!
    It has been your royal gift to me, and I shall be rich and
    great forever because of it. Nothing can ever take it from me,
    nothing can mar it. It were well to have lived a lifetime of
    loneliness for such a boon--the price would not be too high. I
    would not give my one perfect summer for a generation of other
    men's happiness.

    There are those in the world who would laugh at me, who would
    pity me, Una. They would say that the love I have poured out
    in secret at your feet has been wasted, that I am a poor weak
    fool to squander all my treasure of affection on a woman who
    does not care for me and who is as far above me as that great
    white star that is shining over the sea. Oh, my dear, they do
    not know, they cannot understand. The love I have given you
    has not left me poorer. It has enriched my life unspeakably;
    it has opened my eyes and given me the gift of clear vision
    for those things that matter; it has been a lamp held before
    my stumbling feet whereby I have avoided snares and pitfalls

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