Chronicles of Avonlea
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery

Part 1 out of 4








L. M. MONTGOMERY





CHRONICLES
OF
AVONLEA





Typed and Corrected by Kjell Nedrelid.
Last modified 02.11.1996. (dd.mm.yyyy)
Uncorrected version released to Internet 12.10.1996.
This version released 02.11.1996.
You can freely distribute this text in any form as long as you
don't get paid for it.
Please include this short header.





TO THE MEMORY OF
Mrs. William A. Houston,
A DEAR FRIEND, WHO HAS GONE BEYOND




The unsung beauty hid
life's common things below.
--Whittier




Contents



I. The Hurrying of Ludovic

II. Old Lady Lloyd

III. Each In His Own Tongue

IV. Little Joscelyn

V. The Winning of Lucinda

VI. Old Man Shaw's Girl

VII. Aunt Olivia's Beau

VIII. The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's

IX. Pa Sloane's Purchase

X. The Courting of Prissy Strong

XI. The Miracle at Carmody

XII. The End of a Quarrel




Chronicles
of
Avonlea




I. The Hurrying of Ludovic


Anne Shirley was curled up on the window-seat of Theodora Dix's
sitting-room one Saturday evening, looking dreamily
afar at some fair starland beyond the hills of sunset.
Anne was visiting for a fortnight of her vacation at Echo Lodge,
where Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Irving were spending the summer,
and she often ran over to the old Dix homestead to chat
for awhile with Theodora. They had had their chat out,
on this particular evening, and Anne was giving herself
over to the delight of building an air-castle. She leaned
her shapely head, with its braided coronet of dark red hair,
against the window-casing, and her gray eyes were like the moonlight
gleam of shadowy pools.

Then she saw Ludovic Speed coming down the lane.
He was yet far from the house, for the Dix lane was a long one,
but Ludovic could be recognized as far as he could be seen.
No one else in Middle Grafton had such a tall, gently-stooping,
placidly-moving figure. In every kink and turn of it there
was an individuality all Ludovic's own.

Anne roused herself from her dreams, thinking it would only be tactful
to take her departure. Ludovic was courting Theodora. Everyone in
Grafton knew that, or, if anyone were in ignorance of the fact,
it was not because he had not had time to find out. Ludovic had
been coming down that lane to see Theodora, in the same ruminating,
unhastening fashion, for fifteen years!

When Anne, who was slim and girlish and romantic, rose to go, Theodora,
who was plump and middle-aged and practical, said, with a twinkle
in her eye:

"There isn't any hurry, child. Sit down and have your call out.
You've seen Ludovic coming down the lane, and, I suppose, you think
you'll be a crowd. But you won't. Ludovic rather likes a third
person around, and so do I. It spurs up the conversation as it were.
When a man has been coming to see you straight along, twice a week
for fifteen years, you get rather talked out by spells."

Theodora never pretended to bashfulness where Ludovic was concerned.
She was not at all shy of referring to him and his dilatory courtship.
Indeed, it seemed to amuse her.

Anne sat down again and together they watched Ludovic coming down
the lane, gazing calmly about him at the lush clover fields and the blue
loops of the river winding in and out of the misty valley below.

Anne looked at Theodora's placid, finely-moulded face and tried to imagine
what she herself would feel like if she were sitting there, waiting for
an elderly lover who had, seemingly, taken so long to make up his mind.
But even Anne's imagination failed her for this.

"Anyway," she thought, impatiently, "if I wanted him I think I'd
find some way of hurrying him up. Ludovic SPEED! Was there ever
such a misfit of a name? Such a name for such a man is a delusion
and a snare."

Presently Ludovic got to the house, but stood so long on the doorstep in a
brown study, gazing into the tangled green boskage of the cherry orchard,
that Theodora finally went and opened the door before he knocked.
As she brought him into the sitting-room she made a comical grimace
at Anne over his shoulder.

Ludovic smiled pleasantly at Anne. He liked her; she was the only young
girl he knew, for he generally avoided young girls--they made him feel
awkward and out of place. But Anne did not affect him in this fashion.
She had a way of getting on with all sorts of people, and, although they
had not known her very long, both Ludovic and Theodora looked upon
her as an old friend.

Ludovic was tall and somewhat ungainly, but his unhesitating placidity
gave him the appearance of a dignity that did not otherwise pertain
to him. He had a drooping, silky, brown moustache, and a little curly
tuft of imperial,--a fashion which was regarded as eccentric in Grafton,
where men had clean-shaven chins or went full-bearded. His eyes were
dreamy and pleasant, with a touch of melancholy in their blue depths.

He sat down in the big bulgy old armchair that had belonged
to Theodora's father. Ludovic always sat there, and Anne
declared that the chair had come to look like him.

The conversation soon grew animated enough. Ludovic was a good
talker when he had somebody to draw him out. He was well read,
and frequently surprised Anne by his shrewd comments on men and
matters out in the world, of which only the faint echoes reached
Deland River. He had also a liking for religious arguments with Theodora,
who did not care much for politics or the making of history,
but was avid of doctrines, and read everything pertaining thereto.
When the conversation drifted into an eddy of friendly wrangling
between Ludovic and Theodora over Christian Science, Anne understood
that her usefulness was ended for the time being, and that she
would not be missed.

"It's star time and good-night time," she said, and went away quietly.

But she had to stop to laugh when she was well out of sight of the house,
in a green meadow bestarred with the white and gold of daisies.
A wind, odour-freighted, blew daintily across it. Anne leaned
against a white birch tree in the corner and laughed heartily, as she
was apt to do whenever she thought of Ludovic and Theodora. To her
eager youth, this courtship of theirs seemed a very amusing thing.
She liked Ludovic, but allowed herself to be provoked with him.

"The dear, big, irritating goose!" she said aloud.
"There never was such a lovable idiot before. He's just
like the alligator in the old rhyme, who wouldn't go along,
and wouldn't keep still, but just kept bobbing up and down."

Two evenings later, when Anne went over to the Dix place, she and
Theodora drifted into a conversation about Ludovic. Theodora, who was
the most industrious soul alive, and had a mania for fancy work
into the bargain, was busying her smooth, plump fingers with
a very elaborate Battenburg lace centre-piece. Anne was lying
back in a little rocker, with her slim hands folded in her lap,
watching Theodora. She realized that Theodora was very handsome,
in a stately, Juno-like fashion of firm, white flesh, large,
clearly-chiselled outlines, and great, cowey, brown eyes.
When Theodora was not smiling, she looked very imposing.
Anne thought it likely that Ludovic held her in awe.

"Did you and Ludovic talk about Christian Science ALL Saturday evening?"
she asked.

Theodora overflowed into a smile.

"Yes, and we even quarrelled over it. At least _I_ did. Ludovic wouldn't
quarrel with anyone. You have to fight air when you spar with him.
I hate to square up to a person who won't hit back."

"Theodora," said Anne coaxingly, "I am going to be curious
and impertinent. You can snub me if you like. Why don't you
and Ludovic get married?"

Theodora laughed comfortably.

"That's the question Grafton folks have been asking for quite
a while, I reckon, Anne. Well, I'd have no objection to
marrying Ludovic. That's frank enough for you, isn't it?
But it's not easy to marry a man unless he asks you.
And Ludovic has never asked me."

"Is he too shy?" persisted Anne. Since Theodora was in the mood,
she meant to sift this puzzling affair to the bottom.

Theodora dropped her work and looked meditatively out over the green
slopes of the summer world.

"No, I don't think it is that. Ludovic isn't shy. It's just his way--
the Speed way. The Speeds are all dreadfully deliberate. They spend
years thinking over a thing before they make up their minds to do it.
Sometimes they get so much in the habit of thinking about it that they
never get over it--like old Alder Speed, who was always talking
of going to England to see his brother, but never went, though there
was no earthly reason why he shouldn't. They're not lazy, you know,
but they love to take their time."

"And Ludovic is just an aggravated case of Speedism," suggested Anne.

"Exactly. He never hurried in his life. Why, he has been
thinking for the last six years of getting his house painted.
He talks it over with me every little while, and picks out
the colour, and there the matter stays. He's fond of me,
and he means to ask me to have him sometime. The only question is--
will the time ever come?"

"Why don't you hurry him up?" asked Anne impatiently.

Theodora went back to her stitches with another laugh.

"If Ludovic could be hurried up, I'm not the one to do it.
I'm too shy. It sounds ridiculous to hear a woman of my age
and inches say that, but it is true. Of course, I know it's
the only way any Speed ever did make out to get married.
For instance, there's a cousin of mine married to Ludovic's brother.
I don't say she proposed to him out and out, but, mind you,
Anne, it wasn't far from it. I couldn't do anything like that.
I DID try once. When I realized that I was getting sere and mellow,
and all the girls of my generation were going off on either hand,
I tried to give Ludovic a hint. But it stuck in my throat.
And now I don't mind. If I don't change Dix to Speed until
I take the initiative, it will be Dix to the end of life.
Ludovic doesn't realize that we are growing old, you know.
He thinks we are giddy young folks yet, with plenty of time before us.
That's the Speed failing. They never find out they're alive
until they're dead."

"You're fond of Ludovic, aren't you?" asked Anne, detecting a note
of real bitterness among Theodora's paradoxes.

"Laws, yes," said Theodora candidly. She did not think
it worth while to blush over so settled a fact. "I think
the world and all of Ludovic. And he certainly does need
somebody to look after HIM. He's neglected--he looks frayed.
You can see that for yourself. That old aunt of his looks
after his house in some fashion, but she doesn't look after him.
And he's coming now to the age when a man needs to be looked
after and coddled a bit. I'm lonesome here, and Ludovic is
lonesome up there, and it does seem ridiculous, doesn't it?
I don't wonder that we're the standing joke of Grafton. Goodness knows,
I laugh at it enough myself. I've sometimes thought that
if Ludovic could be made jealous it might spur him along.
But I never could flirt and there's nobody to flirt with if I could.
Everybody hereabouts looks upon me as Ludovic's property and nobody
would dream of interfering with him."

"Theodora," cried Anne, "I have a plan!"

"Now, what are you going to do?" exclaimed Theodora.

Anne told her. At first Theodora laughed and protested. In the end,
she yielded somewhat doubtfully, overborne by Anne's enthusiasm.

"Well, try it, then," she said, resignedly. "If Ludovic gets mad
and leaves me, I'll be worse off than ever. But nothing venture,
nothing win. And there is a fighting chance, I suppose.
Besides, I must admit I'm tired of his dilly-dallying."


Anne went back to Echo Lodge tingling with delight in her plot.
She hunted up Arnold Sherman, and told him what was required of him.
Arnold Sherman listened and laughed. He was an elderly widower,
an intimate friend of Stephen Irving, and had come down to spend part
of the summer with him and his wife in Prince Edward Island. He was
handsome in a mature style, and he had a dash of mischief in
him still, so that he entered readily enough into Anne's plan.
It amused him to think of hurrying Ludovic Speed, and he knew
that Theodora Dix could be depended on to do her part.
The comedy would not be dull, whatever its outcome.

The curtain rose on the first act after prayer meeting on the next
Thursday night. It was bright moonlight when the people came
out of church, and everybody saw it plainly. Arnold Sherman stood
upon the steps close to the door, and Ludovic Speed leaned up
against a corner of the graveyard fence, as he had done for years.
The boys said he had worn the paint off that particular place.
Ludovic knew of no reason why he should paste himself up against
the church door. Theodora would come out as usual, and he would
join her as she went past the corner.

This was what happened, Theodora came down the steps, her stately figure
outlined in its darkness against the gush of lamplight from the porch.
Arnold Sherman asked her if he might see her home. Theodora took
his arm calmly, and together they swept past the stupefied Ludovic,
who stood helplessly gazing after them as if unable to believe his eyes.

For a few moments he stood there limply; then he started
down the road after his fickle lady and her new admirer.
The boys and irresponsible young men crowded after,
expecting some excitement, but they were disappointed.
Ludovic strode on until he overtook Theodora and Arnold Sherman,
and then fell meekly in behind them.

Theodora hardly enjoyed her walk home, although Arnold Sherman
laid himself out to be especially entertaining. Her heart yearned
after Ludovic, whose shuffling footsteps she heard behind her.
She feared that she had been very cruel, but she was in for it now.
She steeled herself by the reflection that it was all for his own good,
and she talked to Arnold Sherman as if he were the one man in the world.
Poor, deserted Ludovic, following humbly behind, heard her, and if
Theodora had known how bitter the cup she was holding to his lips
really was, she would never have been resolute enough to present it,
no matter for what ultimate good.

When she and Arnold turned in at her gate, Ludovic had to stop.
Theodora looked over her shoulder and saw him standing still
on the road. His forlorn figure haunted her thoughts all night.
If Anne had not run over the next day and bolstered up her convictions,
she might have spoiled everything by prematurely relenting.

Ludovic, meanwhile, stood still on the road, quite oblivious to
the hoots and comments of the vastly amused small boy contingent,
until Theodora and his rival disappeared from his view under the firs
in the hollow of her lane. Then he turned about and went home,
not with his usual leisurely amble, but with a perturbed stride
which proclaimed his inward disquiet.

He felt bewildered. If the world had come suddenly to an end
or if the lazy, meandering Grafton River had turned about and
flowed up hill, Ludovic could not have been more astonished.
For fifteen years he had walked home from meetings with Theodora;
and now this elderly stranger, with all the glamour of "the States"
hanging about him, had coolly walked off with her under Ludovic's
very nose. Worse--most unkindest cut of all--Theodora had gone
with him willingly; nay, she had evidently enjoyed his company.
Ludovic felt the stirring of a righteous anger in his easy-going soul.

When he reached the end of his lane, he paused at his gate, and looked
at his house, set back from the lane in a crescent of birches.
Even in the moonlight, its weather-worn aspect was plainly visible.
He thought of the "palatial residence" rumour ascribed to Arnold Sherman
in Boston, and stroked his chin nervously with his sunburnt fingers.
Then he doubled up his fist and struck it smartly on the gate-post.

"Theodora needn't think she is going to jilt me in this fashion,
after keeping company with me for fifteen years," he said.
"I'LL have something to say to it, Arnold Sherman or no
Arnold Sherman. The impudence of the puppy!"

The next morning Ludovic drove to Carmody and engaged Joshua Pye to come
and paint his house, and that evening, although he was not due till
Saturday night, he went down to see Theodora.

Arnold Sherman was there before him, and was actually sitting
in Ludovic's own prescriptive chair. Ludovic had to deposit
himself in Theodora's new wicker rocker, where he looked and felt
lamentably out of place.

If Theodora felt the situation to be awkward, she carried it
off superbly. She had never looked handsomer, and Ludovic
perceived that she wore her second best silk dress.
He wondered miserably if she had donned it in expectation of
his rival's call. She had never put on silk dresses for him.
Ludovic had always been the meekest and mildest of mortals,
but he felt quite murderous as he sat mutely there and listened
to Arnold Sherman's polished conversation.

"You should just have been here to see him glowering," Theodora told
the delighted Anne the next day. "It may be wicked of me,
but I felt real glad. I was afraid he might stay away and sulk.
So long as he comes here and sulks I don't worry. But he is feeling
badly enough, poor soul, and I'm really eaten up by remorse.
He tried to outstay Mr. Sherman last night, but he didn't manage it.
You never saw a more depressed-looking creature than he was as
he hurried down the lane. Yes, he actually hurried."

The following Sunday evening Arnold Sherman walked to church
with Theodora, and sat with her. When they came in
Ludovic Speed suddenly stood up in his pew under the gallery.
He sat down again at once, but everybody in view had seen him,
and that night folks in all the length and breadth of Grafton River
discussed the dramatic occurrence with keen enjoyment.

"Yes, he jumped right up as if he was pulled on his feet,
while the minister was reading the chapter," said his cousin,
Lorella Speed, who had been in church, to her sister, who had not.
"His face was as white as a sheet, and his eyes were just
glaring out of his head. I never felt so thrilled, I declare!
I almost expected him to fly at them then and there.
But he just gave a sort of gasp and set down again.
I don't know whether Theodora Dix saw him or not.
She looked as cool and unconcerned as you please."

Theodora had not seen Ludovic, but if she looked cool and unconcerned,
her appearance belied her, for she felt miserably flustered.
She could not prevent Arnold Sherman coming to church with her, but it
seemed to her like going too far. People did not go to church and sit
together in Grafton unless they were the next thing to being engaged.
What if this filled Ludovic with the narcotic of despair instead
of wakening him up! She sat through the service in misery and heard
not one word of the sermon.

But Ludovic's spectacular performances were not yet over.
The Speeds might be hard to get started, but once they were started
their momentum was irresistible. When Theodora and Mr. Sherman
came out, Ludovic was waiting on the steps. He stood up straight
and stern, with his head thrown back and his shoulders squared.
There was open defiance in the look he cast on his rival,
and masterfulness in the mere touch of the hand he laid
on Theodora's arm.

"May I see you home, Miss Dix?" his words said. His tone said,
"I am going to see you home whether or no."

Theodora, with a deprecating look at Arnold Sherman, took his arm,
and Ludovic marched her across the green amid a silence
which the very horses tied to the storm fence seemed to share.
For Ludovic 'twas a crowded hour of glorious life.

Anne walked all the way over from Avonlea the next day to hear the news.
Theodora smiled consciously.

"Yes, it is really settled at last, Anne. Coming home last night Ludovic
asked me plump and plain to marry him,--Sunday and all as it was.
It's to be right away--for Ludovic won't be put off a week
longer than necessary."

"So Ludovic Speed has been hurried up to some purpose at last,"
said Mr. Sherman, when Anne called in at Echo Lodge,
brimful with her news. "And you are delighted, of course,
and my poor pride must be the scapegoat. I shall always
be remembered in Grafton as the man from Boston who wanted
Theodora Dix and couldn't get her."

"But that won't be true, you know," said Anne comfortingly.

Arnold Sherman thought of Theodora's ripe beauty, and the mellow
companionableness she had revealed in their brief intercourse.

"I'm not perfectly sure of that," he said, with a half sigh.





II. Old Lady Lloyd


I. The May Chapter


Spencervale gossip always said that "Old Lady Lloyd" was rich and mean
and proud. Gossip, as usual, was one-third right and two-thirds wrong.
Old Lady Lloyd was neither rich nor mean; in reality she was
pitifully poor--so poor that "Crooked Jack" Spencer, who dug
her garden and chopped her wood for her, was opulent
by contrast, for he, at least, never lacked three meals a day,
and the Old Lady could sometimes achieve no more than one.
But she WAS very proud--so proud that she would have died rather than
let the Spencervale people, among whom she had queened it in her youth,
suspect how poor she was and to what straits was sometimes reduced.
She much preferred to have them think her miserly and odd--
a queer old recluse who never went anywhere, even to church,
and who paid the smallest subscription to the minister's salary
of anyone in the congregation.

"And her just rolling in wealth!" they said indignantly.
"Well, she didn't get her miserly ways from her parents.
THEY were real generous and neighbourly. There never was
a finer gentleman than old Doctor Lloyd. He was always doing
kindnesses to everybody; and he had a way of doing them
that made you feel as if you was doing the favour, not him.
Well, well, let Old Lady Lloyd keep herself and her money
to herself if she wants to. If she doesn't want our company,
she doesn't have to suffer it, that's all. Reckon she isn't
none too happy for all her money and pride."

No, the Old Lady was none too happy, that was unfortunately true.
It is not easy to be happy when your life is eaten up with loneliness
and emptiness on the spiritual side, and when, on the material side,
all you have between you and starvation is the little money your hens
bring you in.

The Old Lady lived "away back at the old Lloyd place," as it was
always called. It was a quaint, low-eaved house, with big chimneys
and square windows and with spruces growing thickly all around it.
The Old Lady lived there all alone and there were weeks at a time
when she never saw a human being except Crooked Jack. What the
Old Lady did with herself and how she put in her time was a puzzle
the Spencervale people could not solve. The children believed she
amused herself counting the gold in the big black box under her bed.
Spencervale children held the Old Lady in mortal terror;
some of them--the "Spencer Road" fry--believed she was a witch;
all of them would run if, when wandering about the woods in search
of berries or spruce gum, they saw at a distance the spare,
upright form of the Old Lady, gathering sticks for her fire.
Mary Moore was the only one who was quite sure she was not a witch.

"Witches are always ugly," she said decisively, "and Old Lady Lloyd
isn't ugly. She's real pretty--she's got such a soft
white hair and big black eyes and a little white face.
Those Road children don't know what they're talking of.
Mother says they're a very ignorant crowd."

"Well, she doesn't ever go to church, and she mutters
and talks to herself all the time she's picking up sticks,"
maintained Jimmy Kimball stoutly.

The Old Lady talked to herself because she was really very fond
of company and conversation. To be sure, when you have talked
to nobody but yourself for nearly twenty years, it is apt to grow
somewhat monotonous; and there were times when the Old Lady
would have sacrificed everything but her pride for a little
human companionship. At such times she felt very bitter and
resentful toward Fate for having taken everything from her.
She had nothing to love, and that is about as unwholesome
a condition as is possible to anyone.

It was always hardest in the spring. Once upon a time the Old Lady--
when she had not been the Old Lady, but pretty, wilful,
high-spirited Margaret Lloyd--had loved springs; now she hated
them because they hurt her; and this particular spring of this
particular May chapter hurt her more than any that had gone before.
The Old Lady felt as if she could NOT endure the ache of it.
Everything hurt her--the new green tips on the firs, the fairy
mists down in the little beech hollow below the house, the fresh
smell of the red earth Crooked Jack spaded up in her garden.
The Old Lady lay awake all one moonlit night and cried for
very heartache. She even forgot her body hunger in her soul hunger;
and the Old Lady had been hungry, more or less, all that week.
She was living on store biscuits and water, so that she
might be able to pay Crooked Jack for digging her garden.
When the pale, lovely dawn-colour came stealing up the sky
behind the spruces, the Old Lady buried her face in her pillow
and refused to look at it.

"I hate the new day," she said rebelliously. "It will be just like all
the other hard, common days. I don't want to get up and live it.
And, oh, to think that long ago I reached out my hands joyfully
to every new day, as to a friend who was bringing me good tidings!
I loved the mornings then--sunny or gray, they were as delightful
as an unread book--and now I hate them--hate them--hate them!"

But the Old Lady got up nevertheless, for she knew
Crooked Jack would be coming early to finish the garden.
She arranged her beautiful, thick, white hair very carefully,
and put on her purple silk dress with the little gold spots in it.
The Old Lady always wore silk from motives of economy.
It was much cheaper to wear a silk dress that had belonged
to her mother than to buy new print at the store. The Old Lady
had plenty of silk dresses which had belonged to her mother.
She wore them morning, noon, and night, and Spencervale
people considered it an additional evidence of her pride.
As for the fashion of them, it was, of course, just because she
was too mean to have them made over. They did not dream
that the Old Lady never put on one of the silk dresses without
agonizing over its unfashionableness, and that even the eyes
of Crooked Jack cast on her antique flounces and overskirts
was almost more than her feminine vanity could endure.

In spite of the fact that the Old Lady had not welcomed
the new day, its beauty charmed her when she went out for a walk
after her dinner--or, rather, after her mid-day biscuit.
It was so fresh, so sweet, so virgin; and the spruce woods
around the old Lloyd place were athrill with busy spring doings
and all sprinkled through with young lights and shadows.
Some of their delight found its way into the Old Lady's bitter
heart as she wandered through them, and when she came out at
the little plank bridge over the brook down under the beeches,
she felt almost gentle and tender once more. There was one big
beech there, in particular, which the Old Lady loved for reasons
best known to herself--a great, tall beech with a trunk like
the shaft of a gray marble column and a leafy spread of branches
over the still, golden-brown pool made beneath it by the brook.
It had been a young sapling in the days that were haloed
by the vanished glory of the Old Lady's life.

The Old Lady heard childish voices and laughter afar up the lane
which led to William Spencer's place just above the woods.
William Spencer's front lane ran out to the main road in a
different direction, but this "back lane" furnished a short
cut and his children always went to school that way.

The Old Lady shrank hastily back behind a clump of young spruces.
She did not like the Spencer children because they always seemed
so afraid of her. Through the spruce screen she could see
them coming gaily down the lane--the two older ones in front,
the twins behind, clinging to the hands of a tall, slim, young girl--
the new music teacher, probably. The Old Lady had heard from
the egg pedlar that she was going to board at William Spencer's,
but she had not heard her name.

She looked at her with some curiosity as they drew near--and then,
all at once, the Old Lady's heart gave a great bound and began to beat
as it had not beaten for years, while her breath came quickly and she
trembled violently. Who--WHO could this girl be?

Under the new music teacher's straw hat were masses of fine chestnut
hair of the very shade and wave that the Old Lady remembered on
another head in vanished years; from under those waves looked large,
violet-blue eyes with very black lashes and brows--and the Old Lady knew
those eyes as well as she knew her own; and the new music teacher's face,
with all its beauty of delicate outline and dainty colouring and glad,
buoyant youth, was a face from the Old Lady's past--a perfect resemblance
in every respect save one; the face which the Old Lady remembered
had been weak, with all its charm; but this girl's face possessed
a fine, dominant strength compact of sweetness and womanliness.
As she passed by the Old Lady's hiding place she laughed at something one
of the children said; and oh, but the Old Lady knew that laughter well.
She had heard it before under that very beech tree.

She watched them until they disappeared over the wooded hill
beyond the bridge; and then she went back home as if she walked
in a dream. Crooked Jack was delving vigorously in the garden;
ordinarily the Old Lady did not talk much with Crooked Jack,
for she disliked his weakness for gossip; but now she went into
the garden, a stately old figure in her purple, gold-spotted silk,
with the sunshine gleaming on her white hair.

Crooked Jack had seen her go out and had remarked to himself
that the Old Lady was losing ground; she was pale and
peaked-looking. He now concluded that he had been mistaken.
The Old Lady's cheeks were pink and her eyes shining.
Somewhere in her walk she had shed ten years at least.
Crooked Jack leaned on his spade and decided that there weren't
many finer looking women anywhere than Old Lady Lloyd. Pity she
was such an old miser!

"Mr. Spencer," said the Old Lady graciously--she always spoke
very graciously to her inferiors when she talked to them
at all--"can you tell me the name of the new music teacher
who is boarding at Mr. William Spencer's?"

"Sylvia Gray," said Crooked Jack.

The Old Lady's heart gave another great bound. But she had known it--
she had known that girl with Leslie Gray's hair and eyes and laugh must
be Leslie Gray's daughter.

Crooked Jack spat on his hand and resumed his work, but his tongue
went faster than his spade, and the Old Lady listened greedily.
For the first time she enjoyed and blessed Crooked Jack's garrulity
and gossip. Every word he uttered was as an apple of gold in a picture
of silver to her.

He had been working at William Spencer's the day the new music teacher
had come, and what Crooked Jack couldn't find out about any person
in one whole day--at least as far as outward life went--was hardly worth
finding out. Next to discovering things did he love telling them,
and it would be hard to say which enjoyed that ensuing half-hour more--
Crooked Jack or the Old Lady.

Crooked Jack's account, boiled down, amounted to this; both Miss Gray's
parents had died when she was a baby, she had been brought up by an aunt,
she was very poor and very ambitious.

"Wants a moosical eddication," finished up Crooked Jack, "and, by jingo,
she orter have it, for anything like the voice of her I never heerd.
She sung for us that evening after supper and I thought 'twas
an angel singing. It just went through me like a shaft o' light.
The Spencer young ones are crazy over her already. She's got twenty
pupils around here and in Grafton and Avonlea."

When the Old Lady had found out everything Crooked Jack
could tell her, she went into the house and sat down by
the window of her little sitting-room to think it all over.
She was tingling from head to foot with excitement.

Leslie's daughter! This Old Lady had had her romance once.
Long ago--forty years ago--she had been engaged to Leslie Gray,
a young college student who taught in Spencervale for the summer
term one year--the golden summer of Margaret Lloyd's life.
Leslie had been a shy, dreamy, handsome fellow with literary
ambitions, which, as he and Margaret both firmly believed,
would one day bring him fame and fortune.

Then there had been a foolish, bitter quarrel at the end
of that golden summer. Leslie had gone away in anger,
afterwards he had written, but Margaret Lloyd, still in the grasp
of her pride and resentment, had sent a harsh answer.
No more letters came; Leslie Gray never returned; and one day
Margaret wakened to the realization that she had put love out
of her life for ever. She knew it would never be hers again;
and from that moment her feet were turned from youth to walk
down the valley of shadow to a lonely, eccentric age.

Many years later she heard of Leslie's marriage; then came news
of his death, after a life that had not fulfilled his dreams for him.
Nothing more she had heard or known--nothing to this day, when she
had seen his daughter pass her by unseeing in the beech hollow.

"His daughter! And she might have been MY daughter,"
murmured the Old Lady. "Oh, if I could only know her and
love her--and perhaps win her love in return! But I cannot.
I could not have Leslie Gray's daughter know how poor I am--
how low I have been brought. I could not bear that.
And to think she is living so near me, the darling--just up
the lane and over the hill. I can see her go by every day--
I can have that dear pleasure, at least. But oh, if I could
only do something for her--give her some little pleasure!
It would be such a delight."

When the Old Lady happened to go into her spare room that evening,
she saw from it a light shining through a gap in the trees on the hill.
She knew that it shone from the Spencers' spare room. So it was
Sylvia's light. The Old Lady stood in the darkness and watched it
until it went out--watched it with a great sweetness breathing in
her heart, such as risen from old rose-leaves when they are stirred.
She fancied Sylvia moving about her room, brushing and braiding
her long, glistening hair--laying aside her little trinkets
and girlish adornments--making her simple preparations for sleep.
When the light went out the Old Lady pictured a slight white figure
kneeling by the window in the soft starshine, and the Old Lady
knelt down then and there and said her own prayers in fellowship.
She said the simple form of words she had always used; but a new spirit
seemed to inspire them; and she finished with a new petition--"Let
me think of something I can do for her, dear Father--some little,
little thing that I can do for her."

The Old Lady had slept in the same room all her life--the one
looking north into the spruces--and loved it; but the next day
she moved into the spare room without a regret. It was to be her
room after this; she must be where she could see Sylvia's light,
she put the bed where she could lie in it and look at that earth star
which had suddenly shone across the twilight shadows of her heart.
She felt very happy, she had not felt happy for many years;
but now a strange, new, dream-like interest, remote from the harsh
realities of her existence, but none the less comforting
and alluring, had entered into her life. Besides, she had thought
of something she could do for Sylvia--"a little, little thing"
that might give her pleasure.

Spencervale people were wont to say regretfully that there
were no Mayflowers in Spencervale; the Spencervale young fry,
when they wanted Mayflowers, thought they had to go over
to the barrens at Avonlea, six miles away, for them.
Old Lady Lloyd knew better. In her many long, solitary rambles,
she had discovered a little clearing far back in the woods--
a southward-sloping, sandy hill on a tract of woodland belonging
to a man who lived in town--which in spring was starred over
with the pink and white of arbutus.

To this clearing the Old Lady betook herself that afternoon,
walking through wood lanes and under dim spruce arches like a woman
with a glad purpose. All at once the spring was dear and beautiful
to her once more; for love had entered again into her heart,
and her starved soul was feasting on its divine nourishment.

Old Lady Lloyd found a wealth of Mayflowers on the sandy hill.
She filled her basket with them, gloating over the loveliness
which was to give pleasure to Sylvia. When she got home she
wrote on a slip of paper, "For Sylvia." It was not likely anyone
in Spencervale would know her handwriting, but, to make sure,
she disguised it, writing in round, big letters like a child's.
She carried her Mayflowers down to the hollow and heaped
them in a recess between the big roots of the old beech,
with the little note thrust through a stem on top.

Then the Old Lady deliberately hid behind the spruce clump.
She had put on her dark green silk on purpose for hiding.
She had not long to wait. Soon Sylvia Gray came down
the hill with Mattie Spencer. When she reached the bridge
she saw the Mayflowers and gave an exclamation of delight.
Then she saw her name and her expression changed to wonder.
The Old Lady, peering through the boughs, could have laughed
for very pleasure over the success of her little plot.

"For me!" said Sylvia, lifting the flowers. "CAN they really
be for me, Mattie? Who could have left them here?"

Mattie giggled.

"I believe it was Chris Stewart," she said. "I know he was over at
Avonlea last night. And ma says he's taken a notion to you--she knows
by the way he looked at you when you were singing night before last.
It would be just like him to do something queer like this--
he's such a shy fellow with the girls."

Sylvia frowned a little. She did not like Mattie's expressions,
but she did like Mayflowers, and she did not dislike Chris Stewart,
who had seemed to her merely a nice, modest, country boy.
She lifted the flowers and buried her face in them.

"Anyway, I'm much obliged to the giver, whoever he or she is,"
she said merrily. "There's nothing I love like Mayflowers. Oh, how
sweet they are!"

When they had passed the Old Lady emerged from her lurking place,
flushed with triumph. It did not vex her that Sylvia should think
Chris Stewart had given her the flowers; nay, it was all the better,
since she would be the less likely to suspect the real donor.
The main thing was that Sylvia should have the delight of them.
That quite satisfied the Old Lady, who went back to her lonely
house with the cockles of her heart all in a glow.

It soon was a matter of gossip in Spencervale that Chris Stewart
was leaving Mayflowers at the beech hollow for the music teacher
every other day. Chris himself denied it, but he was not believed.
Firstly, there were no Mayflowers in Spencervale; secondly, Chris had
to go to Carmody every other day to haul milk to the butter factory,
and Mayflowers grew in Carmody, and, thirdly, the Stewarts always
had a romantic streak in them. Was not that enough circumstantial
evidence for anybody?

As for Sylvia, she did not mind if Chris had a boyish admiration
for her and expressed it thus delicately. She thought it very nice
of him, indeed, when he did not vex her with any other advances,
and she was quite content to enjoy his Mayflowers.

Old Lady Lloyd heard all the gossip about it from the egg pedlar,
and listened to him with laughter glimmering far down in her eyes.
The egg pedlar went away and vowed he'd never seen the Old Lady
so spry as she was this spring; she seemed real interested
in the young folk's doings.

The Old Lady kept her secret and grew young in it. She walked
back to the Mayflower hill as long as the Mayflowers lasted;
and she always hid in the spruces to see Sylvia Gray go by.
Every day she loved her more, and yearned after her more deeply.
All the long repressed tenderness of her nature overflowed to this
girl who was unconscious of it. She was proud of Sylvia's grace
and beauty, and sweetness of voice and laughter. She began to like
the Spencer children because they worshipped Sylvia; she envied
Mrs. Spencer because the latter could minister to Sylvia's needs.
Even the egg pedlar seemed a delightful person because he brought
news of Sylvia--her social popularity, her professional success,
the love and admiration she had won already.

The Old Lady never dreamed of revealing herself to Sylvia. That, in her
poverty, was not to be thought of for a moment. It would have been
very sweet to know her--sweet to have her come to the old house--
sweet to talk to her--to enter into her life. But it might not be.
The Old Lady's pride was still far stronger than her love.
It was the one thing she had never sacrificed and never--
so she believed--could sacrifice.



II. The June Chapter


There were no Mayflowers in June; but now the Old Lady's garden
was full of blossoms and every morning Sylvia found a bouquet
of them by the beech--the perfumed ivory of white narcissus,
the flame of tulips, the fairy branches of bleeding-heart, the
pink-and-snow of little, thorny, single, sweetbreathed early roses.
The Old Lady had no fear of discovery, for the flowers that grew
in her garden grew in every other Spencervale garden as well,
including the Stewart garden. Chris Stewart, when he was teased
about the music teacher, merely smiled and held his peace.
Chris knew perfectly well who was the real giver of those flowers.
He had made it his business to find out when the Mayflower
gossip started. But since it was evident Old Lady Lloyd did
not wish it to be known, Chris told no one. Chris had always
liked Old Lady Lloyd ever since the day, ten years before,
when she had found him crying in the woods with a cut foot
and had taken him into her house, and bathed and bound
the wound, and given him ten cents to buy candy at the store.
The Old Lady went without supper that night because of it,
but Chris never knew that.

The Old Lady thought it a most beautiful June. She no longer
hated the new days; on the contrary, she welcomed them.

"Every day is an uncommon day now," she said jubilantly to herself--
for did not almost every day bring her a glimpse of Sylvia? Even on
rainy days the Old Lady gallantly braved rheumatism to hide
behind her clump of dripping spruces and watch Sylvia pass.
The only days she could not see her were Sundays; and no Sundays
had ever seemed so long to Old Lady Lloyd as those June Sundays did.

One day the egg pedlar had news for her.

"The music teacher is going to sing a solo for a collection
piece to-morrow," he told her.

The Old Lady's black eyes flashed with interest.

"I didn't know Miss Gray was a member of the choir," she said.

"Jined two Sundays ago. I tell you, our music is something
worth listening to now. The church'll be packed to-morrow,
I reckon--her name's gone all over the country for singing.
You ought to come and hear it, Miss Lloyd."

The pedlar said this out of bravado, merely to show
he wasn't scared of the Old Lady, for all her grand airs.
The Old Lady made no answer, and he thought he had offended her.
He went away, wishing he hadn't said it. Had he but known it,
the Old Lady had forgotten the existence of all and any egg pedlars.
He had blotted himself and his insignificance out of her consciousness
by his last sentence. All her thoughts, feelings, and wishes were
submerged in a very whirlpool of desire to hear Sylvia sing that solo.
She went into the house in a tumult and tried to conquer that desire.
She could not do it, even thought she summoned all her pride
to her aid. Pride said:

"You will have to go to church to hear her. You haven't fit
clothes to go to church in. Think what a figure you will make
before them all."

But, for the first time, a more insistent voice than pride spoke
to her soul--and, for the first time, the Old Lady listened to it.
It was too true that she had never gone to church since the day
on which she had to begin wearing her mother's silk dresses.
The Old Lady herself thought that this was very wicked;
and she tried to atone by keeping Sunday very strictly,
and always having a little service of her own, morning and evening.
She sang three hymns in her cracked voice, prayed aloud,
and read a sermon. But she could not bring herself to go
to church in her out-of-date clothes--she, who had once set
the fashions in Spencervale, and the longer she stayed away,
the more impossible it seemed that she should ever again go.
Now the impossible had become, not only possible, but insistent.
She must go to church and hear Sylvia sing, no matter how ridiculous
she appeared, no matter how people talked and laughed at her.

Spencervale congregation had a mild sensation the next afternoon.
Just before the opening of service Old Lady Lloyd walked up
the aisle and sat down in the long-unoccupied Lloyd pew,
in front of the pulpit.

The Old Lady's very soul was writhing within her.
She recalled the reflection she had seen in her mirror before
she left--the old black silk in the mode of thirty years
agone and the queer little bonnet of shirred black satin.
She thought how absurd she must look in the eyes of her world.

As a matter of fact, she did not look in the least absurd.
Some women might have; but the Old Lady's stately distinction
of carriage and figure was so subtly commanding that it did
away with the consideration of garmenting altogether.

The Old Lady did not know this. But she did know that Mrs. Kimball,
the storekeeper's wife, presently rustled into the next pew in
the very latest fashion of fabric and mode; she and Mrs. Kimball
were the same age, and there had been a time when the latter had been
content to imitate Margaret Lloyd's costumes at a humble distance.
But the storekeeper had proposed, and things were changed now;
and there sat poor Old Lady Lloyd, feeling the change bitterly,
and half wishing she had not come to church at all.

Then all at once the Angel of Love touched their foolish thoughts,
born of vanity and morbid pride, and they melted away as if they had
never been. Sylvia Gray had come into the choir, and was sitting just
where the afternoon sunshine fell over her beautiful hair like a halo.
The Old Lady looked at her in a rapture of satisfied longing and
thenceforth the service was blessed to her, as anything is blessed which
comes through the medium of unselfish love, whether human or divine.
Nay, are they not one and the same, differing in degree only,
not in kind?

The Old Lady had never had such a good, satisfying look at
Sylvia before. All her former glimpses had been stolen and fleeting.
Now she sat and gazed upon her to her hungry heart's content,
lingering delightedly over every little charm and loveliness--
the way Sylvia's shining hair rippled back from her forehead,
the sweet little trick she had of dropping quickly her
long-lashed eyelids when she encountered too bold or curious
a glance, and the slender, beautifully modelled hands--
so like Leslie Gray's hands--that held her hymn book.
She was dressed very plainly in a black skirt and a white shirtwaist;
but none of the other girls in the choir, with all their fine feathers,
could hold a candle to her--as the egg pedlar said to his wife,
going home from church.

The Old Lady listened to the opening hymns with keen pleasure.
Sylvia's voice thrilled through and dominated them all.
But when the ushers got up to take the collection, an undercurrent
of subdued excitement flowed over the congregation.
Sylvia rose and came forward to Janet Moore's side at the organ.
The next moment her beautiful voice soared through the building
like the very soul of melody--true, clear, powerful, sweet.
Nobody in Spencervale had ever listened to such a voice,
except Old Lady Lloyd herself, who, in her youth, had heard
enough good singing to enable her to be a tolerable judge of it.
She realized instantly that this girl of her heart had a great gift--
a gift that would some day bring her fame and fortune, if it
could be duly trained and developed.

"Oh, I'm so glad I came to church," thought Old Lady Lloyd.

When the solo was ended, the Old Lady's conscience compelled her to drag
her eyes and thoughts from Sylvia, and fasten them on the minister,
who had been flattering himself all through the opening portion
of the service that Old Lady Lloyd had come to church on his account.
He was newly settled, having been in charge of the Spencervale
congregation only a few months; he was a clever little fellow and
he honestly thought it was the fame of his preaching that had brought
Old Lady Lloyd out to church.

When the service was over all the Old Lady's neighbours came to speak
to her, with kindly smile and handshake. They thought they ought
to encourage her, now that she had made a start in the right direction;
the Old Lady liked their cordiality, and liked it none the less
because she detected in it the same unconscious respect and deference
she had been wont to receive in the old days--a respect and deference
which her personality compelled from all who approached her.
The Old Lady was surprised to find that she could command it still,
in defiance of unfashionable bonnet and ancient attire.

Janet Moore and Sylvia Gray walked home from church together.
"Did you see Old Lady Lloyd out to-day?" asked Janet. "I was amazed
when she walked in. She has never been to church in my recollection.
What a quaint old figure she is! She's very rich, you know,
but she wears her mother's old clothes and never gets a new thing.
Some people think she is mean; but," concluded Janet charitably,
"I believe it is simply eccentricity."

"I felt that was Miss Lloyd as soon as I saw her,
although I had never seen her before," said Sylvia dreamily.
"I have been wishing to see her--for a certain reason.
She has a very striking face. I should like to meet her--
to know her."

"I don't think it's likely you ever will," said Janet carelessly.
"She doesn't like young people and she never goes anywhere.
I don't think I'd like to know her. I'd be afraid of her--
she has such stately ways and such strange, piercing eyes."

"_I_ shouldn't be afraid of her," said Sylvia to herself, as she turned
into the Spencer lane. "But I don't expect I'll ever become acquainted
with her. If she knew who I am I suppose she would dislike me.
I suppose she never suspects that I am Leslie Gray's daughter."

The minister, thinking it well to strike while the iron was hot,
went up to call on Old Lady Lloyd the very next afternoon.
He went in fear and trembling, for he had heard things about
Old Lady Lloyd; but she made herself so agreeable in her high-bred
fashion that he was delighted, and told his wife when he went home
that Spencervale people didn't understand Miss Lloyd. This was
perfectly true; but it is by no means certain that the minister
understood her either.

He made only one mistake in tact, but, as the Old Lady did not snub
him for it, he never knew he made it. When he was leaving he said,
"I hope we shall see you at church next Sunday, Miss Lloyd."

"Indeed, you will," said the Old Lady emphatically.



III. The July Chapter


The first day of July Sylvia found a little birch bark
boat full of strawberries at the beech in the hollow.
They were the earliest of the season; the Old Lady had found
them in one of her secret haunts. They would have been
a toothsome addition to the Old Lady's own slender bill of fare;
but she never thought of eating them. She got far more pleasure
out of the thought of Sylvia's enjoying them for her tea.
Thereafter the strawberries alternated with the flowers as long
as they lasted, and then came blueberries and raspberries.
The blueberries grew far away and the Old Lady had many
a tramp after them. Sometimes her bones ached at night
because of it; but what cared the Old Lady for that?
Bone ache is easier to endure than soul ache; and the Old Lady's
soul had stopped aching for the first time in many year.
It was being nourished with heavenly manna.

One evening Crooked Jack came up to fix something that had gone wrong
with the Old Lady's well. The Old Lady wandered affably out to him;
for she knew he had been working at the Spencers' all day, and there
might be crumbs of information about Sylvia to be picked up.

"I reckon the music teacher's feeling pretty blue this evening,"
Crooked Jack remarked, after straining the Old Lady's patience to
the last verge of human endurance by expatiating on William Spencer's
new pump, and Mrs. Spencer's new washing-machine, and Amelia Spencer's
new young man.

"Why?" asked the Old Lady, turning very pale. Had anything
happened to Sylvia?

"Well, she's been invited to a big party at Mrs. Moore's
brother's in town, and she hasn't got a dress to go in,"
said Crooked Jack. "They're great swells and everybody will
be got up regardless. Mrs. Spencer was telling me about it.
She says Miss Gray can't afford a new dress because she's helping
to pay her aunt's doctor's bills. She says she's sure Miss Gray
feels awful disappointed over it, though she doesn't let on.
But Mrs. Spencer says she knows she was crying after she went
to bed last night."

The Old Lady turned and went into the house abruptly. This was dreadful.
Sylvia must go to that party--she MUST. But how was it to be managed?
Through the Old Lady's brain passed wild thoughts of her mother's
silk dresses. But none of them would be suitable, even if there were
time to make one over. Never had the Old Lady so bitterly regretted
her vanished wealth.

"I've only two dollars in the house," she said, "and I've got
to live on that till the next day the egg pedlar comes round.
Is there anything I can sell--ANYTHING? Yes, yes, the grape jug!"

Up to this time, the Old Lady would as soon have thought of trying
to sell her head as the grape jug. The grape jug was two hundred years
old and had been in the Lloyd family ever since it was a jug at all.
It was a big, pot-bellied affair, festooned with pink-gilt grapes,
and with a verse of poetry printed on one side, and it had been given
as a wedding present to the Old Lady's great-grandmother. As long as
the Old Lady could remember it had sat on the top shelf in the cupboard
in the sitting-room wall, far too precious ever to be used.

Two years before, a woman who collected old china had
explored Spencervale, and, getting word of the grape jug,
had boldly invaded the old Lloyd place and offered to buy it.
She never, to her dying day, forgot the reception the Old Lady
gave her; but, being wise in her day and generation,
she left her card, saying that if Miss Lloyd ever changed
her mind about selling the jug, she would find that she,
the aforesaid collector, had not changed hers about buying it.
People who make a hobby of heirloom china must meekly overlook snubs,
and this particular person had never seen anything she coveted
so much as that grape jug.

The Old Lady had torn the card to pieces; but she remembered the name
and address. She went to the cupboard and took down the beloved jug.

"I never thought to part with it," she said wistfully,
"but Sylvia must have a dress, and there is no other way.
And, after all, when I'm gone, who would there be to have it?
Strangers would get it then--it might as well go to them now.
I'll have to go to town to-morrow morning, for there's no time to lose
if the party is Friday night. I haven't been to town for ten years.
I dread the thought of going, more than parting with the jug.
But for Sylvia's sake!"

It was all over Spencervale by the next morning that Old Lady Lloyd
had gone to town, carrying a carefully guarded box.
Everybody wondered why she went; most people supposed she had
become too frightened to keep her money in a black box below
her bed, when there had been two burglaries over at Carmody,
and had taken it to the bank.

The Old Lady sought out the address of the china collector,
trembling with fear that she might be dead or gone.
But the collector was there, very much alive, and as keenly
anxious to possess the grape jug as ever. The Old Lady,
pallid with the pain of her trampled pride, sold the grape
jug and went away, believing that her great-grandmother must
have turned over in her grave at the moment of the transaction.
Old Lady Lloyd felt like a traitor to her traditions.

But she went unflinchingly to a big store and, guided by that
special Providence which looks after simple-minded old souls
in their dangerous excursions into the world, found a sympathetic
clerk who knew just what she wanted and got it for her.
The Old Lady selected a very dainty muslin gown, with gloves and slippers
in keeping; and she ordered it sent at once, expressage prepaid,
to Miss Sylvia Gray, in care of William Spencer, Spencervale.

Then she paid down the money--the whole price of the jug,
minus a dollar and a half for railroad fare--with a grand,
careless air and departed. As she marched erectly down the aisle
of the store, she encountered a sleek, portly, prosperous man
coming in. As their eyes met, the man started and his bland
face flushed crimson; he lifted his hat and bowed confusedly.
But the Old Lady looked through him as if he wasn't there,
and passed on with not a sign of recognition about her.
He took one step after her, then stopped and turned away,
with a rather disagreeable smile and a shrug of his shoulders.

Nobody would have guessed, as the Old Lady swept out, how her
heart was seething with abhorrence and scorn. She would not
have had the courage to come to town, even for Sylvia's sake,
if she had thought she would meet Andrew Cameron. The mere sight
of him opened up anew a sealed fountain of bitterness in her soul;
but the thought of Sylvia somehow stemmed the torrent, and presently
the Old Lady was smiling rather triumphantly, thinking rightly that she
had come off best in that unwelcome encounter. SHE, at any rate,
had not faltered and coloured, and lost her presence of mind.

"It is little wonder HE did," thought the Old Lady vindictively.
It pleased her that Andrew Cameron should lose, before her,
the front of adamant he presented to the world. He was her cousin
and the only living creature Old Lady Lloyd hated, and she hated
and despised him with all the intensity of her intense nature.
She and hers had sustained grievous wrong at his hands,
and the Old Lady was convinced that she would rather die than take
any notice of his existence.

Presently, she resolutely put Andrew Cameron out of her mind.
It was desecration to think of him and Sylvia together.
When she laid her weary head on her pillow that night she was so
happy that even the thought of the vacant shelf in the room below,
where the grape jug had always been, gave her only a momentary pang.

"It's sweet to sacrifice for one we love--it's sweet to have someone
to sacrifice for," thought the Old Lady.

Desire grows by what it feeds on. The Old Lady thought she was content;
but Friday evening came and found her in a perfect fever to see
Sylvia in her party dress. It was not enough to fancy her in it;
nothing would do the Old Lady but seeing her.

"And I SHALL see her," said the Old Lady resolutely, looking out
from her window at Sylvia's light gleaming through the firs.
She wrapped herself in a dark shawl and crept out, slipping down
to the hollow and up the wood lane. It was a misty, moonlight night,
and a wind, fragrant with the aroma of clover fields, blew down
the lane to meet her.

"I wish I could take your perfume--the soul of you--and pour it
into her life," said the Old Lady aloud to that wind.

Sylvia Gray was standing in her room, ready for the party.
Before her stood Mrs. Spencer and Amelia Spencer and all the little
Spencer girls, in an admiring semi-circle. There was another spectator.
Outside, under the lilac bush, Old Lady Lloyd was standing.
She could see Sylvia plainly, in her dainty dress, with the pale pink
roses Old Lady Lloyd had left at the beech that day for her in her hair.
Pink as they were, they were not so pink as her cheeks, and her eyes
shone like stars. Amelia Spencer put up her hand to push back
a rose that had fallen a little out of place, and the Old Lady
envied her fiercely.

"That dress couldn't have fitted better if it had been made for you,"
said Mrs. Spencer admiringly. "Ain't she lovely, Amelia? Who COULD
have sent it?"

"Oh, I feel sure that Mrs. Moore was the fairy godmother,"
said Sylvia. "There is nobody else who would. It was dear of her--
she knew I wished so much to go to the party with Janet. I wish Aunty
could see me now." Sylvia gave a little sigh in spite of her joy.
"There's nobody else to care very much."

Ah, Sylvia, you were wrong! There was somebody else--
somebody who cared very much--an Old Lady, with eager, devouring eyes,
who was standing under the lilac bush and who presently stole
away through the moonlit orchard to the woods like a shadow,
going home with a vision of you in your girlish beauty to companion
her through the watches of that summer night.



IV. The August Chapter


One day the minister's wife rushed in where Spencervale
people had feared to tread, went boldly to Old Lady Lloyd,
and asked her if she wouldn't come to their Sewing Circle,
which met fortnightly on Saturday afternoons.

"We are filling a box to send to our Trinidad missionary,"
said the minister's wife, "and we should be so pleased to have
you come, Miss Lloyd."

The Old Lady was on the point of refusing rather haughtily. Not that she
was opposed to missions--or sewing circles either--quite the contrary,
but she knew that each member of the Circle was expected to pay
ten cents a week for the purpose of procuring sewing materials;
and the poor Old Lady really did not see how she could afford it.
But a sudden thought checked her refusal before it reached her lips.

"I suppose some of the young girls go to the Circle?"
she said craftily.

"Oh, they all go," said the minister's wife.
"Janet Moore and Miss Gray are our most enthusiastic members.
It is very lovely of Miss Gray to give her Saturday afternoons--
the only ones she has free from pupils--to our work.
But she really has the sweetest disposition."

"I'll join your Circle," said the Old Lady promptly.
She was determined she would do it, if she had to live on two
meals a day to save the necessary fee.

She went to the Sewing Circle at James Martin's the next Saturday,
and did the most beautiful hand sewing for them. She was
so expert at it that she didn't need to think about it at all,
which was rather fortunate, for all her thoughts were taken up
with Sylvia, who sat in the opposite corner with Janet Moore,
her graceful hands busy with a little boy's coarse gingham shirt.
Nobody thought of introducing Sylvia to Old Lady Lloyd,
and the Old Lady was glad of it. She sewed finely away,
and listened with all her ears to the girlish chatter which went on
in the opposite corner. One thing she found out--Sylvia's birthday
was the twentieth of August. And the Old Lady was straightway
fired with a consuming wish to give Sylvia a birthday present.
She lay awake most of the night wondering if she could do it,
and most sorrowfully concluded that it was utterly out of
the question, no matter how she might pinch and contrive.
Old Lady Lloyd worried quite absurdly over this, and it haunted
her like a spectre until the next Sewing Circle day.

It met at Mrs. Moore's and Mrs. Moore was especially gracious
to Old Lady Lloyd, and insisted on her taking the wicker rocker in
the parlour. The Old Lady would rather have been in the sitting-room
with the young girls, but she submitted for courtesy's sake--
and she had her reward. Her chair was just behind the parlour door,
and presently Janet Moore and Sylvia Gray came and sat on the stairs
in the hall outside, where a cool breeze blew in through the maples
before the front door.

They were talking of their favourite poets. Janet, it appeared,
adored Byron and Scott. Sylvia leaned to Tennyson and Browning.

"Do you know," said Sylvia softly, "my father was a poet?
He published a little volume of verse once; and, Janet, I've never seen
a copy of it, and oh, how I would love to! It was published when
he was at college--just a small, private edition to give his friends.
He never published any more--poor father! I think life disappointed him.
But I have such a longing to see that little book of his verse.
I haven't a scrap of his writings. If I had it would seem as if I
possessed something of him--of his heart, his soul, his inner life.
He would be something more than a mere name to me."

"Didn't he have a copy of his own--didn't your mother
have one?" asked Janet.

"Mother hadn't. She died when I was born, you know, but Aunty
says there was no copy of father's poems among mother's books.
Mother didn't care for poetry, Aunty says--Aunty doesn't either.
Father went to Europe after mother died, and he died there the next year.
Nothing that he had with him was ever sent home to us.
He had sold most of his books before he went, but he gave a few of his
favourite ones to Aunty to keep for me. HIS book wasn't among them.
I don't suppose I shall ever find a copy, but I should be so delighted
if I only could."

When the Old Lady got home she took from her top bureau drawer
an inlaid box of sandalwood. It held a little, slim, limp volume,
wrapped in tissue paper--the Old Lady's most treasured possession.
On the fly-leaf was written, "To Margaret, with the author's love."

The Old Lady turned the yellow leaves with trembling
fingers and, through eyes brimming with tears, read the verses,
although she had known them all by heart for years.
She meant to give the book to Sylvia for a birthday present--
one of the most precious gifts ever given, if the value
of gifts is gauged by the measure of self-sacrifice involved.
In that little book was immortal love--old laughter--
old tears--old beauty which had bloomed like a rose years ago,
holding still its sweetness like old rose leaves. She removed
the telltale fly-leaf; and late on the night before Sylvia's birthday,
the Old Lady crept, under cover of the darkness, through byways
and across fields, as if bent on some nefarious expedition,
to the little Spencervale store where the post-office was kept.
She slipped the thin parcel through the slit in the door,
and then stole home again, feeling a strange sense of loss
and loneliness. It was as if she had given away the last link
between herself and her youth. But she did not regret it.
It would give Sylvia pleasure, and that had come to be
the overmastering passion of the Old Lady's heart.

The next night the light in Sylvia's room burned very late,
and the Old Lady watched it triumphantly, knowing the meaning of it.
Sylvia was reading her father's poems, and the Old Lady in her
darkness read them too, murmuring the lines over and over to herself.
After all, giving away the book had not mattered so very much.
She had the soul of it still--and the fly-leaf with the name,
in Leslie's writing, by which nobody ever called her now.

The Old Lady was sitting on the Marshall sofa the next Sewing Circle
afternoon when Sylvia Gray came and sat down beside her.
The Old Lady's hands trembled a little, and one side of a handkerchief,
which was afterwards given as a Christmas present to a little
olive-skinned coolie in Trinidad, was not quite so exquisitely done
as the other three sides.

Sylvia at first talked of the Circle, and Mrs. Marshall's dahlias,
and the Old Lady was in the seventh heaven of delight, though she took
care not to show it, and was even a little more stately and finely
mannered than usual. When she asked Sylvia how she liked living
in Spencervale, Sylvia said,

"Very much. Everybody is so kind to me. Besides"--Sylvia lowered
her voice so that nobody but the Old Lady could hear it--"I have
a fairy godmother here who does the most beautiful and wonderful
things for me."

Sylvia, being a girl of fine instincts, did not look at Old Lady Lloyd as
she said this. But she would not have seen anything if she had looked.
The Old Lady was not a Lloyd for nothing.

"How very interesting," she said, indifferently.

"Isn't it? I am so grateful to her and I have wished
so much she might know how much pleasure she has given me.
I have found lovely flowers and delicious berries on my
path all summer; I feel sure she sent me my party dress.
But the dearest gift came last week on my birthday--a little volume
of my father's poems. I can't express what I felt on receiving them.
But I longed to meet my fairy godmother and thank her."

"Quite a fascinating mystery, isn't it? Have you really no idea
who she is?"

The Old Lady asked this dangerous question with marked success.
She would not have been so successful if she had not been
so sure that Sylvia had no idea of the old romance between her
and Leslie Gray. As it was, she had a comfortable conviction
that she herself was the very last person Sylvia would be
likely to suspect.

Sylvia hesitated for an almost unnoticeable moment. Then she said,
"I haven't tried to find out, because I don't think she wants me to know.
At first, of course, in the matter of the flowers and dress,
I did try to solve the mystery; but, since I received the book,
I became convinced that it was my fairy godmother who was doing it all,
and I have respected her wish for concealment and always shall.
Perhaps some day she will reveal herself to me. I hope so, at least."

"I wouldn't hope it," said the Old Lady discouragingly.
"Fairy godmothers--at least, in all the fairy tales I ever read--
are somewhat apt to be queer, crochety people, much more agreeable
when wrapped up in mystery than when met face to face."

"I'm convinced that mine is the very opposite, and that the better
I became acquainted with her, the more charming a personage I
should find her," said Sylvia gaily.

Mrs. Marshall came up at this juncture and entreated
Miss Gray to sing for them. Miss Gray consenting sweetly,
the Old Lady was left alone and was rather glad of it.
She enjoyed her conversation with Sylvia much more in thinking
it over after she got home than while it was taking place.
When an Old Lady has a guilty conscience, it is apt to make
her nervous and distract her thoughts from immediate pleasure.
She wondered a little uneasily if Sylvia really did suspect her.
Then she concluded that it was out of the question.
Who would suspect a mean, unsociable Old Lady, who had no friends,
and who gave only five cents to the Sewing Circle when everyone
else gave ten or fifteen, to be a fairy godmother, the donor of
beautiful party dresses, and the recipient of gifts from romantic,
aspiring young poets?



V. The September Chapter


In September the Old Lady looked back on the summer and owned to herself
that it had been a strangely happy one, with Sundays and Sewing Circle
days standing out like golden punctuation marks in a poem of life.
She felt like an utterly different woman; and other people thought
her different also. The Sewing Circle women found her so pleasant,
and even friendly, that they began to think they had misjudged her,
and that perhaps it was eccentricity after all, and not meanness,
which accounted for her peculiar mode of living. Sylvia Gray always
came and talked to her on Circle afternoons now, and the Old Lady
treasured every word she said in her heart and repeated them over
and over to her lonely self in the watches of the night.

Sylvia never talked of herself or her plans, unless asked about them;
and the Old Lady's self-consciousness prevented her from asking any
personal questions: so their conversation kept to the surface of things,
and it was not from Sylvia, but from the minister's wife that the Old Lady
finally discovered what her darling's dearest ambition was.

The minister's wife had dropped in at the old Lloyd place one
evening late in September, when a chilly wind was blowing up
from the northeast and moaning about the eaves of the house,
as if the burden of its lay were "harvest is ended and summer is gone."
The Old Lady had been listening to it, as she plaited a little
basket of sweet grass for Sylvia. She had walked all the way to
Avonlea sand-hills for it the day before, and she was very tired.
And her heart was sad. This summer, which had so enriched her life,
was almost over; and she knew that Sylvia Gray talked of leaving
Spencervale at the end of October. The Old Lady's heart felt
like very lead within her at the thought, and she almost
welcomed the advent of the minister's wife as a distraction,
although she was desperately afraid that the minister's wife
had called to ask for a subscription for the new vestry carpet,
and the Old Lady simply could not afford to give one cent.

But the minister's wife had merely dropped in on her way home
from the Spencers' and she did not make any embarrassing requests.
Instead, she talked about Sylvia Gray, and her words fell on the
Old Lady's ears like separate pearl notes of unutterably sweet music.
The minister's wife had nothing but praise for Sylvia--she was
so sweet and beautiful and winning.

"And with SUCH a voice," said the minister's wife enthusiastically,
adding with a sigh, "It's such a shame she can't have it
properly trained. She would certainly become a great singer--
competent critics have told her so. But she is so poor she
doesn't think she can ever possibly manage it--unless she
can get one of the Cameron scholarships, as they are called;
and she has very little hope of that, although the professor
of music who taught her has sent her name in."

"What are the Cameron scholarships?" asked the Old Lady.

"Well, I suppose you have heard of Andrew Cameron, the millionaire?"
said the minister's wife, serenely unconscious that she was
causing the very bones of the Old Lady's family skeleton to jangle
in their closet.

Into the Old Lady's white face came a sudden faint stain of colour,
as if a rough hand had struck her cheek.

"Yes, I've heard of him," she said.

"Well, it seems that he had a daughter, who was a very
beautiful girl, and whom he idolized. She had a fine voice,
and he was going to send her abroad to have it trained.
And she died. It nearly broke his heart, I understand.
But ever since, he sends one young girl away to Europe every
year for a thorough musical education under the best teachers--
in memory of his daughter. He has sent nine or ten already;
but I fear there isn't much chance for Sylvia Gray, and she
doesn't think there is herself."

"Why not?" asked the Old Lady spiritedly. "I am sure that there
can be few voices equal to Miss Gray's."

"Very true. But you see, these so-called scholarships are
private affairs, dependent solely on the whim and choice of
Andrew Cameron himself. Of course, when a girl has friends who use
their influence with him, he will often send her on their recommendation.
They say he sent a girl last year who hadn't much of a voice at all
just because her father had been an old business crony of his.
But Sylvia doesn't know anyone at all who would, to use a slang term,
have any 'pull' with Andrew Cameron, and she is not acquainted
with him herself. Well, I must be going; we'll see you at the Manse
on Saturday, I hope, Miss Lloyd. The Circle meets there, you know."

"Yes, I know," said the Old Lady absently. When the minister's wife
had gone, she dropped her sweetgrass basket and sat for a long,
long time with her hands lying idly in her lap, and her big black
eyes staring unseeingly at the wall before her.

Old Lady Lloyd, so pitifully poor that she had to eat six crackers
the less a week to pay her fee to the Sewing Circle, knew that it was
in her power--HERS--to send Leslie Gray's daughter to Europe for her
musical education! If she chose to use her "pull" with Andrew Cameron--
if she went to him and asked him to send Sylvia Gray abroad the next year--
she had no doubt whatever that it would be done. It all lay with her--
if--if--IF she could so far crush and conquer her pride as to stoop
to ask a favour of the man who had wronged her and hers so bitterly.

Years ago, her father, acting under the advice and urgency of
Andrew Cameron, had invested all his little fortune in an enterprise
that had turned out a failure. Abraham Lloyd lost every dollar
he possessed, and his family were reduced to utter poverty.
Andrew Cameron might have been forgiven for a mistake;
but there was a strong suspicion, amounting to almost certainty,
that he had been guilty of something far worse than a mistake
in regard to his uncle's investment. Nothing could be
legally proved; but it was certain that Andrew Cameron,
already noted for his "sharp practices," emerged with improved
finances from an entanglement that had ruined many better men;
and old Doctor Lloyd had died brokenhearted, believing that his
nephew had deliberately victimized him.

Andrew Cameron had not quite done this; he had meant well enough
by his uncle at first, and what he had finally done he tried
to justify to himself by the doctrine that a man must look
out for Number One.

Margaret Lloyd made no such excuses for him; she held him responsible,
not only for her lost fortune, but for her father's death,
and never forgave him for it. When Abraham Lloyd had died,
Andrew Cameron, perhaps pricked by his conscience, had come
to her, sleekly and smoothly, to offer her financial aid.
He would see, he told her, that she never suffered want.

Margaret Lloyd flung his offer back in his face after a fashion
that left nothing to be desired in the way of plain speaking.
She would die, she told him passionately, before she would accept
a penny or a favour from him. He had preserved an unbroken
show of good temper, expressed his heartfelt regret that she
should cherish such an unjust opinion of him, and had left
her with an oily assurance that he would always be her friend,
and would always be delighted to render her any assistance
in his power whenever she should choose to ask for it.

The Old Lady had lived for twenty years in the firm conviction
that she would die in the poorhouse--as, indeed, seemed not unlikely--
before she would ask a favour of Andrew Cameron. And so, in truth,
she would have, had it been for herself. But for Sylvia! Could she
so far humble herself for Sylvia's sake?

The question was not easily or speedily settled, as had been
the case in the matters of the grape jug and the book of poems.
For a whole week the Old Lady fought her pride and bitterness.
Sometimes, in the hours of sleepless night, when all human resentments and
rancours seemed petty and contemptible, she thought she had conquered it.
But in the daytime, with the picture of her father looking down at
her from the wall, and the rustle of her unfashionable dresses,
worn because of Andrew Cameron's double dealing, in her ears,
it got the better of her again.

But the Old Lady's love for Sylvia had grown so strong and deep
and tender that no other feeling could endure finally against it.
Love is a great miracle worker; and never had its power been
more strongly made manifest than on the cold, dull autumn
morning when the Old Lady walked to Bright River railway
station and took the train to Charlottetown, bent on an errand
the very thought of which turned her soul sick within her.
The station master who sold her her ticket thought Old Lady Lloyd
looked uncommonly white and peaked--"as if she hadn't slept a wink
or eaten a bite for a week," he told his wife at dinner time.
"Guess there's something wrong in her business affairs.
This is the second time she's gone to town this summer."

When the Old Lady reached the town, she ate her slender little lunch
and then walked out to the suburb where the Cameron factories and
warehouses were. It was a long walk for her, but she could not afford
to drive. She felt very tired when she was shown into the shining,
luxurious office where Andrew Cameron sat at his desk.

After the first startled glance of surprise, he came forward beamingly,
with outstretched hand.

"Why, Cousin Margaret! This is a pleasant surprise. Sit down--allow me,
this is a much more comfortable chair. Did you come in this morning?
And how is everybody out in Spencervale?"

The Old Lady had flushed at his first words. To hear
the name by which her father and mother and lover had called
her on Andrew Cameron's lips seemed like profanation.
But, she told herself, the time was past for squeamishness.
If she could ask a favour of Andrew Cameron, she could bear
lesser pangs. For Sylvia's sake she shook hands with him,
for Sylvia's sake she sat down in the chair he offered.
But for no living human being's sake could this determined
Old Lady infuse any cordiality into her manner or her words.
She went straight to the point with Lloyd simplicity.

"I have come to ask a favour of you," she said, looking him in the eye,
not at all humbly or meekly, as became a suppliant, but challengingly
and defiantly, as if she dared him to refuse.

"DE-lighted to hear it, Cousin Margaret." Never was anything so
bland and gracious as his tone. "Anything I can do for you I shall
be only too pleased to do. I am afraid you have looked upon me as
an enemy, Margaret, and I assure you I have felt your injustice keenly.
I realize that some appearances were against me, but--"

The Old Lady lifted her hand and stemmed his eloquence by
that one gesture.

"I did not come here to discuss that matter," she said.
"We will not refer to the past, if you please. I came to ask a favour,
not for myself, but for a very dear young friend of mine--a Miss Gray,
who has a remarkably fine voice which she wishes to have trained.
She is poor, so I came to ask you if you would give her one
of your musical scholarships. I understand her name has already
been suggested to you, with a recommendation from her teacher.
I do not know what he has said of her voice, but I do know
he could hardly overrate it. If you send her abroad for training,
you will not make any mistake."

The Old Lady stopped talking. She felt sure Andrew Cameron would
grant her request, but she did hope he would grant it rather rudely
or unwillingly. She could accept the favour so much more easily
if it were flung to her like a bone to a dog. But not a bit of it.
Andrew Cameron was suaver than ever. Nothing could give him
greater pleasure than to grant his dear Cousin Margaret's request--
he only wished it involved more trouble on his part.
Her little protege should have her musical education assuredly--
she should go abroad next year--and he was DE-lighted--

"Thank you," said the Old Lady, cutting him short again.
"I am much obliged to you--and I ask you not to let Miss Gray
know anything of my interference. And I shall not take up
any more of your valuable time. Good afternoon."

"Oh, you mustn't go so soon," he said, with some real kindness
or clannishness permeating the hateful cordiality of his voice--
for Andrew Cameron was not entirely without the homely virtues
of the average man. He had been a good husband and father;
he had once been very fond of his Cousin Margaret; and he was
really very sorry that "circumstances" had "compelled" him to act
as he had done in that old affair of her father's investment.
"You must be my guest to-night."

"Thank you. I must return home to-night," said the Old Lady firmly,
and there was that in her tone which told Andrew Cameron
that it would be useless to urge her. But he insisted on
telephoning for his carriage to drive her to the station.
The Old Lady submitted to this, because she was secretly
afraid her own legs would not suffice to carry her there;
she even shook hands with him at parting, and thanked him
a second time for granting her request.

"Not at all," he said. "Please try to think a little more kindly
of me, Cousin Margaret."

When the Old Lady reached the station she found, to her dismay,
that her train had just gone and that she would have to wait two hours
for the evening one. She went into the waiting-room and sat down.
She was very tired. All the excitement that had sustained her was gone,
and she felt weak and old. She had nothing to eat, having expected to get
home in time for tea; the waiting-room was chilly, and she shivered
in her thin, old, silk mantilla. Her head ached and her heart likewise.
She had won Sylvia's desire for her; but Sylvia would go out of her life,
and the Old Lady did not see how she was to go on living after that.
Yet she sat there unflinchingly for two hours, an upright,
indomitable old figure, silently fighting her losing battle with the
forces of physical and mental pain, while happy people came and went,
and laughed and talked before her.

At eight o'clock the Old Lady got off the train at Bright River station,
and slipped off unnoticed into the darkness of the wet night.
She had two miles to walk, and a cold rain was falling.
Soon the Old Lady was wet to the skin and chilled to the marrow.
She felt as if she were walking in a bad dream. Blind instinct alone
guided her over the last mile and up the lane to her own house.
As she fumbled at her door, she realized that a burning heat
had suddenly taken the place of her chilliness. She stumbled
in over her threshold and closed the door.



VI. The October Chapter


On the second morning after Old Lady Lloyd's journey to town,
Sylvia Gray was walking blithely down the wood lane.
It was a beautiful autumn morning, clear and crisp and sunny;
the frosted ferns, drenched and battered with the rain of yesterday,
gave out a delicious fragrance; here and there in the woods
a maple waved a gay crimson banner, or a branch of birch
showed pale golden against the dark, unchanging spruces.
The air was very pure and exhilarating. Sylvia walked with a
joyous lightness of step and uplift of brow.

At the beech in the hollow she paused for an expectant moment, but there
was nothing among the gray old roots for her. She was just turning
away when little Teddy Kimball, who lived next door to the manse,
came running down the slope from the direction of the old Lloyd place.
Teddy's freckled face was very pale.

"Oh, Miss Gray!" he gasped. "I guess Old Lady Lloyd has gone
clean crazy at last. The minister's wife asked me to run up to
the Old Lady, with a message about the Sewing Circle--and I knocked--
and knocked--and nobody came--so I thought I'd just step in and
leave the letter on the table. But when I opened the door,
I heard an awful queer laugh in the sitting-room, and next minute,
the Old Lady came to the sitting-room door. Oh, Miss Gray,
she looked awful. Her face was red and her eyes awful wild--
and she was muttering and talking to herself and laughing like mad.
I was so scared I just turned and run."

Sylvia, without stopping for reflection, caught Teddy's hand and ran
up the slope. It did not occur to her to be frightened, although she
thought with Teddy that the poor, lonely, eccentric Old Lady had really
gone out of her mind at last.

The Old Lady was sitting on the kitchen sofa when Sylvia entered.
Teddy, too frightened to go in, lurked on the step outside.
The Old Lady still wore the damp black silk dress in which she had walked
from the station. Her face was flushed, her eyes wild, her voice hoarse.
But she knew Sylvia and cowered down.

"Don't look at me," she moaned. "Please go away--
I can't bear that YOU should know how poor I am.
You're to go to Europe--Andrew Cameron is going to send you--
I asked him--he couldn't refuse ME. But please go away."

Sylvia did not go away. At a glance she had seen that this
was sickness and delirium, not insanity. She sent Teddy off
in hot haste for Mrs. Spencer and when Mrs. Spencer came they
induced the Old Lady to go to bed, and sent for the doctor.
By night everybody in Spencervale knew that Old Lady Lloyd
had pneumonia.

Mrs. Spencer announced that she meant to stay and nurse
the Old Lady. Several other women offered assistance.
Everybody was kind and thoughtful. But the Old Lady did not know it.
She did not even know Sylvia Gray, who came and sat by her
every minute she could spare. Sylvia Gray now knew all that
she had suspected--the Old Lady was her fairy godmother.
The Old Lady babbled of Sylvia incessantly, revealing all her
love for her, betraying all the sacrifices she had made.
Sylvia's heart ached with love and tenderness, and she prayed
earnestly that the Old Lady might recover.

"I want her to know that I give her love for love," she murmured.

Everybody knew now how poor the Old Lady really was.
She let slip all the jealously guarded secrets of her existence,
except her old love for Leslie Gray. Even in delirium something
sealed her lips as to that. But all else came out--her anguish over
her unfashionable attire, her pitiful makeshifts and contrivances,
her humiliation over wearing unfashionable dresses and paying
only five cents where every other Sewing Circle member paid ten.
The kindly women who waited on her listened to her with tearfilled eyes,
and repented of their harsh judgments in the past.

"But who would have thought it?" said Mrs. Spencer to the
minister's wife. "Nobody ever dreamed that her father had lost ALL
his money, though folks supposed he had lost some in that old affair
of the silver mine out west. It's shocking to think of the way she has
lived all these years, often with not enough to eat--and going to bed
in winter days to save fuel. Though I suppose if we had known we couldn't
have done much for her, she's so desperate proud. But if she lives,
and will let us help her, things will be different after this.
Crooked Jack says he'll never forgive himself for taking pay for
the few little jobs he did for her. He says, if she'll only let him,
he'll do everything she wants done for her after this for nothing.
Ain't it strange what a fancy she's took to Miss Gray? Think of her
doing all those things for her all summer, and selling the grape jug
and all. Well, the Old Lady certainly isn't mean, but nobody made
a mistake in calling her queer. It all does seem desperate pitiful.
Miss Gray's taking it awful hard. She seems to think about as much
of the Old Lady as the Old Lady thinks of her. She's so worked
up she don't even seem to care about going to Europe next year.
She's really going--she's had word from Andrew Cameron. I'm awful glad,
for there never was a sweeter girl in the world; but she says it
will cost too much if the Old Lady's life is to pay for it."

Andrew Cameron heard of the Old Lady's illness and came out
to Spencervale himself. He was not allowed to see the Old Lady,
of course; but he told all concerned that no expense or trouble
was to be spared, and the Spencervale doctor was instructed
to send his bill to Andrew Cameron and hold his peace about it.
Moreover, when Andrew Cameron went back home, he sent a trained
nurse out to wait on the Old Lady, a capable, kindly woman who
contrived to take charge of the case without offending Mrs. Spencer--
than which no higher tribute could be paid to her tact!

The Old Lady did not die--the Lloyd constitution brought her through.
One day, when Sylvia came in, the Old Lady smiled up at her,
with a weak, faint, sensible smile, and murmured her name,
and the nurse said that the crisis was past.

The Old Lady made a marvellously patient and tractable invalid.
She did just as she was told, and accepted the presence of the nurse
as a matter of course.

But one day, when she was strong enough to talk a little,
she said to Sylvia,

"I suppose Andrew Cameron sent Miss Hayes here, did he?"
"Yes," said Sylvia, rather timidly.

The Old Lady noticed the timidity and smiled, with something
of her old humour and spirit in her black eyes.

"Time has been when I'd have packed off unceremoniously any person
Andrew Cameron sent here," she said. "But, Sylvia, I have gone
through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and I have left pride
and resentment behind me for ever, I hope. I no longer feel as I felt
towards Andrew. I can even accept a personal favour from him now.
At last I can forgive him for the wrong he did me and mine.
Sylvia, I find that I have been letting no ends of cats out
of bags in my illness. Everybody knows now how poor I am--
but I don't seem to mind it a bit. I'm only sorry that I ever
shut my neighbours out of my life because of my foolish pride.
Everyone has been so kind to me, Sylvia. In the future, if my
life is spared, it is going to be a very different sort of life.
I'm going to open it to all the kindness and companionship I can find
in young and old. I'm going to help them all I can and let them help me.
I CAN help people--I've learned that money isn't the only power
for helping people. Anyone who has sympathy and understanding
to give has a treasure that is without money and without price.
And oh, Sylvia, you've found out what I never meant you to know.
But I don't mind that now, either."

Sylvia took the Old Lady's thin white hand and kissed it.

"I can never thank you enough for what you have done for me,
dearest Miss Lloyd," she said earnestly. "And I am so glad
that all mystery is done away with between us, and I can
love you as much and as openly as I have longed to do.
I am so glad and so thankful that you love me, dear fairy godmother."

"Do you know WHY I love you so?" said the Old Lady wistfully.
"Did I let THAT out in my raving, too?"

"No. but I think I know. It is because I am Leslie Gray's daughter,
isn't it? I know that father loved you--his brother, Uncle Willis,
told me all about it."

"I spoiled my own life because of my wicked pride,"
said the Old Lady sadly. "But you will love me in spite of it all,
won't you, Sylvia? And you will come to see me sometimes?
And write me after you go away?"

"I am coming to see you every day," said Sylvia. "I am going
to stay in Spencervale for a whole year yet, just to be near you.
And next year when I go to Europe--thanks to you, fairy godmother--
I'll write you every day. We are going to be the best of chums,
and we are going to have a most beautiful year of comradeship!"

The Old Lady smiled contentedly. Out in the kitchen,
the minister's wife, who had brought up a dish of jelly, was talking
to Mrs. Spencer about the Sewing Circle. Through the open window,
where the red vines hung, came the pungent, sun-warm October air.
The sunshine fell over Sylvia's chestnut hair like a crown
of glory and youth.

"I do feel so perfectly happy," said the Old Lady,
with a long, rapturous breath.





III. Each In His Own Tongue


The honey-tinted autumn sunshine was falling thickly over
the crimson and amber maples around old Abel Blair's door.
There was only one outer door in old Abel's house, and it almost
always stood wide open. A little black dog, with one ear missing
and a lame forepaw, almost always slept on the worn red sandstone
slab which served old Abel for a doorstep; and on the still
more worn sill above it a large gray cat almost always slept.
Just inside the door, on a bandy-legged chair of elder days,
old Abel almost always sat.

He was sitting there this afternoon--a little old man,
sadly twisted with rheumatism; his head was abnormally large,
thatched with long, wiry black hair; his face was heavily lined
and swarthily sunburned; his eyes were deep-set and black,
with occasional peculiar golden flashes in them. A strange looking
man was old Abel Blair; and as strange was he as he looked.
Lower Carmody people would have told you.

Old Abel was almost always sober in these, his later years.
He was sober to-day. He liked to bask in that ripe sunlight
as well as his dog and cat did; and in such baskings he almost
always looked out of his doorway at the far, fine blue sky over
the tops of the crowding maples. But to-day he was not looking
at the sky, instead, he was staring at the black, dusty rafters
of his kitchen, where hung dried meats and strings of onions
and bunches of herbs and fishing tackle and guns and skins.

But old Abel saw not these things; his face was the face of a man
who beholds visions, compact of heavenly pleasure and hellish pain,
for old Abel was seeing what he might have been--and what he was;
as he always saw when Felix Moore played to him on the violin.
And the awful joy of dreaming that he was young again, with unspoiled
life before him, was so great and compelling that it counterbalanced
the agony in the realization of a dishonoured old age, following years
in which he had squandered the wealth of his soul in ways where Wisdom
lifted not her voice.

Felix Moore was standing opposite to him, before an untidy stove,
where the noon fire had died down into pallid, scattered ashes.
Under his chin he held old Abel's brown, battered fiddle;
his eyes, too, were fixed on the ceiling; and he, too, saw things
not lawful to be uttered in any language save that of music;
and of all music, only that given forth by the anguished,
enraptured spirit of the violin. And yet this Felix was little more
than twelve years old, and his face was still the face of a child
who knows nothing of either sorrow or sin or failure or remorse.
Only in his large, gray-black eyes was there something not
of the child--something that spoke of an inheritance from
many hearts, now ashes, which had aforetime grieved and joyed,
and struggled and failed, and succeeded and grovelled.
The inarticulate cries of their longings had passed into this
child's soul, and transmuted themselves into the expression
of his music.

Felix was a beautiful child. Carmody people, who stayed at home,
thought so; and old Abel Blair, who had roamed afar in many lands,
thought so; and even the Rev. Stephen Leonard, who taught, and tried
to believe, that favour is deceitful and beauty is vain, thought so.

He was a slight lad, with sloping shoulders, a slim brown neck,
and a head set on it with stag-like grace and uplift.
His hair, cut straight across his brow and falling over his ears,
after some caprice of Janet Andrews, the minister's housekeeper,
was a glossy blue-black. the skin of his face and hands was
like ivory; his eyes were large and beautifully tinted--gray,
with dilating pupils; his features had the outlines of a cameo.
Carmody mothers considered him delicate, and had long foretold
that the minister would never bring him up; but old Abel pulled


 


Back to Full Books