Chronicles of Avonlea
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery

Part 2 out of 4



his grizzled moustache when he heard such forebodings and smiled.

"Felix Moore will live," he said positively. "You can't kill
that kind until their work is done. He's got a work to do--
if the minister'll let him do it. And if the minister don't
let him do it, then I wouldn't be in that minister's shoes
when he comes to the judgment--no, I'd rather be in my own.
It's an awful thing to cross the purposes of the Almighty,
either in your own life or anybody else's. Sometimes I think
it's what's meant by the unpardonable sin--ay, that I do!"

Carmody people never asked what old Abel meant. They had long ago given
up such vain questioning. When a man had lived as old Abel had lived
for the greater part of his life, was it any wonder he said crazy things?
And as for hinting that Mr. Leonard, a man who was really almost too
good to live, was guilty of any sin, much less an unpardonable one--
well, there now! what use was it to be taking any account of old Abel's
queer speeches? Though, to be sure, there was no great harm in a fiddle,
and maybe Mr. Leonard was a mite too strict that way with the child.
But then, could you wonder at it? There was his father, you see.

Felix finally lowered the violin, and came back to old Abel's
kitchen with a long sigh. Old Abel smiled drearily at him--
the smile of a man who has been in the hands of the tormentors.

"It's awful the way you play--it's awful," he said with a shudder.
"I never heard anything like it--and you that never had any teaching
since you were nine years old, and not much practice, except what
you could get here now and then on my old, battered fiddle.
And to think you make it up yourself as you go along!
I suppose your grandfather would never hear to your studying music--
would he now?"

Felix shook his head.

"I know he wouldn't, Abel. He wants me to be a minister.
Ministers are good things to be, but I'm afraid I can't
be a minister."

"Not a pulpit minister. There's different kinds of ministers,
and each must talk to men in his own tongue if he's going to do 'em
any real good," said old Abel meditatively. "YOUR tongue is music.
Strange that your grandfather can't see that for himself, and him such
a broad-minded man! He's the only minister I ever had much use for.
He's God's own if ever a man was. And he loves you--yes, sir, he loves
you like the apple of his eye."

"And I love him," said Felix warmly. "I love him so much that I'll
even try to be a minister for his sake, though I don't want to be."

"What do you want to be?"

"A great violinist," answered the child, his ivory-hued
face suddenly warming into living rose. "I want to play
to thousands--and see their eyes look as yours do when I play.
Sometimes your eyes frighten me, but oh, it's a splendid fright!
If I had father's violin I could do better. I remember
that he once said it had a soul that was doing purgatory
for its sins when it had lived on earth. I don't know what
he meant, but it did seem to me that HIS violin was alive.
He taught me to play on it as soon as I was big enough to hold it."

"Did you love your father?" asked old Abel, with a keen look.

Again Felix crimsoned; but he looked straightly and steadily
into his old friend's face.

"No," he said, "I didn't; but," he added, gravely and deliberately,
"I don't think you should have asked me such a question."

It was old Abel's turn to blush. Carmody people would not have
believed he could blush; and perhaps no living being could
have called that deepening hue into his weather-beaten cheek
save only this gray-eyed child of the rebuking face.

"No, I guess I shouldn't," he said. "But I'm always making mistakes.
I've never made anything else. That's why I'm nothing more than
'Old Abel' to the Carmody people. Nobody but you and your grandfather
ever calls me 'Mr. Blair.' Yet William Blair at the store up there,
rich and respected as he is, wasn't half as clever a man as I was
when we started in life: you mayn't believe that, but it's true.
And the worst of it is, young Felix, that most of the time I don't
care whether I'm Mr. Blair of old Abel. Only when you play I care.
It makes me feel just as a look I saw in a little girl's eyes some years
ago made me feel. Her name was Anne Shirley and she lived with the
Cuthberts down at Avonlea. We got into a conversation at Blair's store.
She could talk a blue streak to anyone, that girl could. I happened
to say about something that it didn't matter to a battered old hulk
of sixty odd like me. She looked at me with her big, innocent eyes,
a little reproachful like, as if I'd said something awful heretical.
'Don't you think, Mr. Blair,' she says, 'that the older we get
the more things ought to matter to us?'--as grave as if she'd been
a hundred instead of eleven. 'Things matter SO much to me now,'
she says, clasping her hands thisaway, 'and I'm sure that when
I'm sixty they'll matter just five times as much to me.'
Well, the way she looked and the way she spoke made me feel downright
ashamed of myself because things had stopped mattering with me.
But never mind all that. My miserable old feelings don't count for much.
What come of your father's fiddle?"

"Grandfather took it away when I came here. I think he burned it.
And I long for it so often."

"Well, you've always got my old brown fiddle to come to when you must."

"Yes, I know. And I'm glad for that. But I'm hungry for a violin all
the time. And I only come here when the hunger gets too much to bear.
I feel as if I oughtn't to come even then--I'm always saying I won't
do it again, because I know grandfather wouldn't like it, if he knew."

"He has never forbidden it, has he?"

"No, but that is because he doesn't know I come here for that.
He never thinks of such a thing. I feel sure he WOULD forbid it,
if he knew. And that makes me very wretched. And yet I HAVE to come.
Mr. Blair, do you know why grandfather can't bear to have me
play on the violin? He loves music, and he doesn't mind
my playing on the organ, if I don't neglect other things.
I can't understand it, can you?"

"I have a pretty good idea, but I can't tell you. It isn't my secret.
Maybe he'll tell you himself some day. But, mark you, young Felix,
he has got good reasons for it all. Knowing what I know, I can't
blame him over much, though I think he's mistaken. Come now,
play something more for me before you go--something that's bright
and happy this time, so as to leave me with a good taste in my mouth.
That last thing you played took me straight to heaven,--but heaven's
awful near to hell, and at the last you tipped me in."

"I don't understand you," said Felix, drawing his fine,
narrow black brows together in a perplexed frown.

"No--and I wouldn't want you to. You couldn't understand unless
you was an old man who had it in him once to do something
and be a MAN, and just went and made himself a devilish fool.
But there must be something in you that understands things--all kinds
of things--or you couldn't put it all into music the way you do.
How do you do it? How in--how DO you do it, young Felix?"

"I don't know. But I play differently to different people.
I don't know how that is. When I'm alone with you I have to play
one way; and when Janet comes over here to listen I feel quite
another way--not so thrilling, but happier and lonelier.
And that day when Jessie Blair was here listening I felt as if I
wanted to laugh and sing--as if the violin wanted to laugh
and sing all the time."

The strange, golden gleam flashed through old Abel's sunken eyes.

"God," he muttered under his breath, "I believe the boy can
get into other folk's souls somehow, and play out what HIS
soul sees there."

"What's that you say?" inquired Felix, petting his fiddle.

"Nothing--never mind--go on. Something lively now,
young Felix. Stop probing into my soul, where you haven't no
business to be, you infant, and play me something out of your own--
something sweet and happy and pure."

"I'll play the way I feel on sunshiny mornings, when the birds are
singing and I forget I have to be a minister," said Felix simply.



A witching, gurgling, mirthful strain, like mingled bird and brook song,
floated out on the still air, along the path where the red
and golden maple leaves were falling very softly, one by one.
The Reverend Stephen Leonard heard it, as he came along the way,
and the Reverend Stephen Leonard smiled. Now, when Stephen Leonard
smiled, children ran to him, and grown people felt as if they looked
from Pisgah over to some fair land of promise beyond the fret
and worry of their care-dimmed earthly lives.

Mr. Leonard loved music, as he loved all things beautiful,
whether in the material or the spiritual world, though he did not
realize how much he loved them for their beauty alone, or he would
have been shocked and remorseful. He himself was beautiful.
His figure was erect and youthful, despite seventy years.
His face was as mobile and charming as a woman's, yet with
all a man's tried strength and firmness in it, and his dark
blue eyes flashed with the brilliance of one and twenty;
even his silken silvery hair could not make an old man of him.
He was worshipped by everyone who knew him, and he was,
in so far as mortal man may be, worthy of that worship.

"Old Abel is amusing himself with his violin again," he thought.
"What a delicious thing he is playing! He has quite a gift
for the violin. But how can he play such a thing as that,--
a battered old hulk of a man who has, at one time or another,
wallowed in almost every sin to which human nature can sink?
He was on one of his sprees three days ago--the first one
for over a year--lying dead-drunk in the market square in
Charlottetown among the dogs; and now he is playing something
that only a young archangel on the hills of heaven ought to be
able to play. Well, it will make my task all the easier.
Abel is always repentant by the time he is able to play
on his fiddle."

Mr. Leonard was on the door-stone. The little black dog had frisked
down to meet him, and the gray cat rubbed her head against his leg.
Old Abel did not notice him; he was beating time with uplifted hand
and smiling face to Felix's music, and his eyes were young again,
glowing with laughter and sheer happiness.

"Felix! what does this mean?"

The violin bow clattered from Felix's hand upon the floor;
he swung around and faced his grandfather. As he met the passion
of grief and hurt in the old man's eyes, his own clouded
with an agony of repentance.

"Grandfather--I'm sorry," he cried brokenly.

"Now, now!" Old Abel had risen deprecatingly.
"It's all my fault, Mr. Leonard. Don't you blame the boy.
I coaxed him to play a bit for me. I didn't feel fit to touch
the fiddle yet myself--too soon after Friday, you see.
So I coaxed him on--wouldn't give him no peace till he played.
It's all my fault."

"No," said Felix, throwing back his head. His face was as white
as marble, yet it seemed ablaze with desperate truth and scorn of old
Abel's shielding lie. "No, grandfather, it isn't Abel's fault.
I came over here on purpose to play, because I thought you had
gone to the harbour. I have come here often, ever since I have
lived with you."

"Ever since you have lived with me you have been deceiving me
like this, Felix?"

There was no anger in Mr. Leonard's tone--only measureless sorrow.
The boy's sensitive lips quivered.

"Forgive me, grandfather," he whispered beseechingly.

"You never forbid him to come," old Abel broke in angrily.
"Be just, Mr. Leonard--be just."

"I AM just. Felix knows that he has disobeyed me, in the spirit
if not in the letter. Do you not know it, Felix?"

"Yes, grandfather, I have done wrong--I've known that I was doing
wrong every time I came. Forgive me, grandfather."

"Felix, I forgive you, but I ask you to promise me, here and now,
that you will never again, as long as you live, touch a violin."
Dusky crimson rushed madly over the boy's face.
He gave a cry as if he had been lashed with a whip.
Old Abel sprang to his feet.

"Don't you ask such a promise of him, Mr. Leonard," he cried furiously.
"It's a sin, that's what it is. Man, man, what blinds you?
You ARE blind. Can't you see what is in the boy? His soul
is full of music. It'll torture him to death--or to worse--
if you don't let it have way."

"There is a devil in such music," said Mr. Leonard hotly.

"Ay, there may be, but don't forget that there's a Christ
in it, too," retorted old Abel in a low tense tone.

Mr. Leonard looked shocked; he considered that old Abel had
uttered blasphemy. He turned away from him rebukingly.

"Felix, promise me."

There was no relenting in his face or tone. He was merciless in
the use of the power he possessed over that young, loving spirit.
Felix understood that there was no escape; but his lips were very white
as he said,

"I promise, grandfather."

Mr. Leonard drew a long breath of relief. He knew that promise
would be kept. So did old Abel. The latter crossed the floor
and sullenly took the violin from Felix's relaxed hand.
Without a word or look he went into the little bedroom off
the kitchen and shut the door with a slam of righteous indignation.
But from its window he stealthily watched his visitors go away.
Just as they entered on the maple path Mr. Leonard laid his hand
on Felix's head and looked down at him. Instantly the boy flung
his arm up over the old man's shoulder and smiled at him.
In the look they exchanged there was boundless love and trust--
ay, and good-fellowship. Old Abel's scornful eyes again held
the golden flash.

"How those two love each other!" he muttered enviously.
"And how they torture each other!"



Mr. Leonard went to his study to pray when he got home.
He knew that Felix had run for comforting to Janet Andrews, the little,
thin, sweet-faced, rigid-lipped woman who kept house for them.
Mr. Leonard knew that Janet would disapprove of his action as deeply
as old Abel had done. She would say nothing, she would only look
at him with reproachful eyes over the teacups at suppertime.
But Mr. Leonard believed he had done what was best and his conscience
did not trouble him, though his heart did.

Thirteen years before this, his daughter Margaret had almost
broken that heart by marrying a man of whom he could not approve.
Martin Moore was a professional violinist. He was a popular performer,
though not in any sense a great one. He met the slim,
golden-haired daughter of the manse at the house of a college friend
she was visiting in Toronto, and fell straightway in love with her.
Margaret had loved him with all her virginal heart in return,
and married him, despite her father's disapproval.
It was not to Martin Moore's profession that Mr. Leonard objected,
but to the man himself. He knew that the violinist's past life
had not been such as became a suitor for Margaret Leonard;
and his insight into character warned him that Martin Moore could
never make any woman lastingly happy.

Margaret Leonard did not believe this. She married Martin Moore
and lived one year in paradise. Perhaps that atoned for
the three bitter years which followed--that, and her child.
At all events, she died as she had lived, loyal and uncomplaining.
She died alone, for her husband was away on a concert tour,
and her illness was so brief that her father had not time
to reach her before the end. Her body was taken home to be
buried beside her mother in the little Carmody churchyard.
Mr. Leonard wished to take the child, but Martin Moore refused
to give him up.

Six years later Moore, too, died, and at last Mr. Leonard
had his heart's desire--the possession of Margaret's son.
The grandfather awaited the child's coming with mingled feelings.
His heart yearned for him, yet he dreaded to meet a second
edition of Martin Moore. Suppose Margaret's son resembled his
handsome vagabond of a father! Or, worse still, suppose he were
cursed with his father's lack of principle, his instability,
his Bohemian instincts. Thus Mr. Leonard tortured himself
wretchedly before the coming of Felix.

The child did not look like either father or mother.
Instead, Mr. Leonard found himself looking into a face
which he had put away under the grasses thirty years before--
the face of his girl bride, who had died at Margaret's birth.
Here again were her lustrous gray-black eyes, her ivory outlines,
her fine-traced arch of brow; and here, looking out of those eyes,
seemed her very spirit again. From that moment the soul
of the old man was knit to the soul of the child, and they
loved each other with a love surpassing that of women.

Felix's only inheritance from his father was his love of music.
But the child had genius, where his father had possessed only talent.
To Martin Moore's outward mastery of the violin was added the mystery
and intensity of his mother's nature, with some more subtle
quality still, which had perhaps come to him from the grandmother
he so strongly resembled. Moore had understood what a career was
naturally before the child, and he had trained him in the technique
of his art from the time the slight fingers could first grasp the bow.
When nine-year-old Felix came to the Carmody manse, he had mastered
as much of the science of the violin as nine out of ten musicians
acquire in a lifetime; and he brought with him his father's violin;
it was all Martin Moore had to leave his son--but it was an Amati,
the commercial value of which nobody in Carmody suspected.
Mr. Leonard had taken possession of it and Felix had never seen it since.
He cried himself to sleep many a night for the loss of it.
Mr. Leonard did not know this, and if Janet Andrews suspected
it she held her tongue--an art in which she excelled.
She "saw no harm in a fiddle," herself, and thought Mr. Leonard
absurdly strict in the matter, though it would not have been well for
the luckless outsider who might have ventured to say as much to her.
She had connived at Felix's visits to old Abel Blair, squaring the
matter with her Presbyterian conscience by some peculiar process
known only to herself.

When Janet heard of the promise which Mr. Leonard had exacted from
Felix she seethed with indignation; and, though she "knew her place"
better than to say anything to Mr. Leonard about it, she made
her disapproval so plainly manifest in her bearing that the stern,
gentle old man found the atmosphere of his hitherto peaceful manse
unpleasantly chill and hostile for a time.

It was the wish of his heart that Felix should be a minister,
as he would have wished his own son to be, had one been born to him.
Mr. Leonard thought rightly that the highest work to which any man
could be called was a life of service to his fellows; but he made
the mistake of supposing the field of service much narrower than it is--
of failing to see that a man may minister to the needs of humanity
in many different but equally effective ways.



Janet hoped that Mr. Leonard might not exact the fulfilment
of Felix's promise; but Felix himself, with the instinctive
understanding of perfect love, knew that it was vain
to hope for any change of viewpoint in his grandfather.
He addressed himself to the keeping of his promise in letter
and in spirit. He never went again to old Abel's; he did
not even play on the organ, though this was not forbidden,
because any music wakened in him a passion of longing and ecstasy
which demanded expression with an intensity not to be borne.
He flung himself grimly into his studies and conned Latin
and Greek verbs with a persistency which soon placed him at
the head of all competitors.

Only once in the long winter did he come near to breaking his promise.
One evening, when March was melting into April, and the pulses
of spring were stirring under the lingering snow, he was walking
home from school alone. As he descended into the little hollow
below the manse a lively lilt of music drifted up to meet him.
It was only the product of a mouth-organ, manipulated by a little
black-eyed, French-Canadian hired boy, sitting on the fence by the brook;
but there was music in the ragged urchin and it came out through his
simple toy. It tingled over Felix from head to foot; and, when Leon
held out the mouth-organ with a fraternal grin of invitation,
he snatched at it as a famished creature might snatch at food.

Then, with it half-way to his lips, he paused.
True, it was only the violin he had promised never to touch;
but he felt that if he gave way ever so little to the desire
that was in him, it would sweep everything before it.
If he played on Leon Buote's mouth-organ, there in that misty
spring dale, he would go to old Abel's that evening; he KNEW
he would go. To Leon's amazement, Felix threw the mouth-organ
back at him and ran up the hill as if he were pursued.
There was something in his boyish face that frightened Leon;
and it frightened Janet Andrews as Felix rushed past her in
the hall of the manse.

"Child, what's the matter with you?" she cried. "Are you sick?
Have you been scared?"

"No, no. Leave me alone, Janet," said Felix chokingly,
dashing up the stairs to his own room.

He was quite composed when he came down to tea, an hour later,
though he was unusually pale and had purple shadows under
his large eyes.

Mr. Leonard scrutinized him somewhat anxiously; it suddenly
occurred to the old minister that Felix was looking more
delicate than his wont this spring. Well, he had studied
hard all winter, and he was certainly growing very fast.
When vacation came he must be sent away for a visit.

"They tell me Naomi Clark is real sick," said Janet. "She has been
ailing all winter, and now she's fast to her bed. Mrs. Murphy says
she believes the woman is dying, but nobody dares tell her so.
She won't give in she's sick, nor take medicine. And there's nobody
to wait on her except that simple creature, Maggie Peterson."

"I wonder if I ought to go and see her," said Mr. Leonard uneasily.

"What use would it be to bother yourself? You know she wouldn't
see you--she'd shut the door in your face like she did before.
She's an awful wicked woman--but it's kind of terrible to think
of her lying there sick, with no responsible person to tend her."

"Naomi Clark is a bad woman and she lived a life of shame,
but I like her, for all that," remarked Felix, in the grave,
meditative tone in which he occasionally said rather startling things.

Mr. Leonard looked somewhat reproachfully at Janet Andrews,
as if to ask her why Felix should have attained to this dubious
knowledge of good and evil under her care; and Janet shot a dour
look back which, being interpreted, meant that if Felix went
to the district school she could not and would not be held
responsible if he learned more there than arithmetic and Latin.

"What do you know of Naomi Clark to like or dislike?"
she asked curiously. "Did you ever see her?"

"Oh, yes," Felix replied, addressing himself to his cherry
preserve with considerable gusto. "I was down at Spruce Cove
one night last summer when a big thunderstorm came up.
I went to Naomi's house for shelter. The door was open,
so I walked right in, because nobody answered my knock.
Naomi Clark was at the window, watching the cloud coming
up over the sea. She just looked at me once, but didn't
say anything, and then went on watching the cloud.
I didn't like to sit down because she hadn't asked me to,
so I went to the window by her and watched it, too. It was
a dreadful sight--the cloud was so black and the water so green,
and there was such a strange light between the cloud and the water;
yet there was something splendid in it, too. Part of the time I
watched the storm, and the other part I watched Naomi's face.
It was dreadful to see, like the storm, and yet I liked to see it.

"After the thunder was over it rained a while longer,
and Naomi sat down and talked to me. She asked me who I was,
and when I told her she asked me to play something for her on
her violin,"--Felix shot a deprecating glance at Mr. Leonard--
"because, she said, she'd heard I was a great hand at it.
She wanted something lively, and I tried just as hard as I
could to play something like that. But I couldn't. I played
something that was terrible--it just played itself--it seemed
as if something was lost that could never be found again.
And before I got through, Naomi came at me, and tore the violin
from me, and--SWORE. And she said, 'You big-eyed brat,
how did you know THAT?' Then she took me by the arm--
and she hurt me, too, I can tell you--and she put me right out
in the rain and slammed the door."

"The rude, unmannerly creature!" said Janet indignantly.

"Oh, no, she was quite in the right," said Felix composedly.
"It served me right for what I played. You see, she didn't
know I couldn't help playing it. I suppose she thought I did
it on purpose."

"What on earth did you play, child?"

"I don't know." Felix shivered. "It was awful--it was dreadful.
It was fit to break you heart. But it HAD to be played, if I played
anything at all."

"I don't understand what you mean--I declare I don't,"
said Janet in bewilderment.

"I think we'll change the subject of conversation," said Mr. Leonard.



It was a month later when "the simple creature, Maggie" appeared at
the manse door one evening and asked for the preached.

"Naomi wants ter see yer," she mumbled. "Naomi sent Maggie ter
tell yer ter come at onct."

"I shall go, certainly," said Mr. Leonard gently.
"Is she very ill?"

"Her's dying," said Maggie with a broad grin. "And her's
awful skeered of hell. Her just knew ter-day her was dying.
Maggie told her--her wouldn't believe the harbour women,
but her believed Maggie. Her yelled awful."

Maggie chuckled to herself over the gruesome remembrance.
Mr. Leonard, his heart filled with pity, called Janet
and told her to give the poor creature some refreshment.
But Maggie shook her head.

"No, no, preacher, Maggie must get right back to Naomi. Maggie'll tell
her the preacher's coming ter save her from hell."

She uttered an eerie cry, and ran at full speed shoreward through
the spruce woods.

"The Lord save us!" said Janet in an awed tone. "I knew the poor
girl was simple, but I didn't know she was like THAT. And are
you going, sir?"

"Yes, of course. I pray God I may be able to help the poor soul,"
said Mr. Leonard sincerely. He was a man who never shirked
what he believed to be his duty; but duty had sometimes
presented itself to him in pleasanter guise than this summons
to Naomi Clark's death-bed.

The woman had been the plague spot of Lower Carmody and Carmody Harbour
for a generation. In the earlier days of his ministry to the congregation
he had tried to reclaim her, and Naomi had mocked and flouted him
to his face. Then, for the sake of those to whom she was a snare or a
heart-break, he had endeavoured to set the law in motion against her,
and Naomi had laughed the law to scorn. Finally, he had been compelled
to let her alone.

Yet Naomi had not always been an outcast. Her girlhood had been innocent;
but she was the possessor of a dangerous beauty, and her mother was dead.
Her father was a man notorious for his harshness and violence of temper.
When Naomi made the fatal mistake of trusting to a false love that
betrayed and deserted, he drove her from his door with taunts and curses.

Naomi took up her quarters in a little deserted house at
Spruce Cove. Had her child lived it might have saved her.
But it died at birth, and with its little life went her last
chance of worldly redemption. From that time forth, her feet
were set in the way that takes hold on hell.

For the past five years, however, Naomi had lived a tolerably
respectable life. When Janet Peterson had died, her idiot daughter,
Maggie, had been left with no kin in the world. Nobody knew what was
to be done with her, for nobody wanted to be bothered with her.
Naomi Clark went to the girl and offered her a home. People said she
was no fit person to have charge of Maggie, but everybody shirked
the unpleasant task of interfering in the matter, except Mr. Leonard,
who went to expostulate with Naomi, and, as Janet said, for his pains
got her door shut in his face.

But from the day when Maggie Peterson went to live with her,
Naomi ceased to be the harbour Magdalen.



The sun had set when Mr. Leonard reached Spruce Cove, and the
harbour was veiling itself in a wondrous twilight splendour.
Afar out, the sea lay throbbing and purple, and the moan
of the bar came through the sweet, chill spring air
with its burden of hopeless, endless longing and seeking.
The sky was blossoming into stars above the afterglow;
out to the east the moon was rising, and the sea beneath it
was a thing of radiance and silver and glamour; and a little
harbour boat that went sailing across it was transmuted into
an elfin shallop from the coast of fairyland.

Mr. Leonard sighed as he turned from the sinless beauty
of the sea and sky to the threshold of Naomi Clark's house.
It was very small--one room below, and a sleeping-loft above;
but a bed had been made up for the sick woman by the down-stairs
window looking out on the harbour; and Naomi lay on it,
with a lamp burning at her head and another at her side,
although it was not yet dark. A great dread of darkness had
always been one of Naomi's peculiarities.

She was tossing restlessly on her poor couch, while Maggie crouched
on a box at the foot. Mr. Leonard had not seen her for five years,
and he was shocked at the change in her. She was much wasted;
her clear-cut, aquiline features had been of the type which becomes
indescribably witch-like in old age, and, though Naomi Clark
was barely sixty, she looked as if she might be a hundred.
Her hair streamed over the pillow in white, uncared-for tresses,
and the hands that plucked at the bed-clothes were like wrinkled claws.
Only her eyes were unchanged; they were as blue and brilliant as ever,
but now filled with such agonized terror and appeal that Mr. Leonard's
gentle heart almost stood still with the horror of them.
They were the eyes of a creature driven wild with torture,
hounded by furies, clutched by unutterable fear.

Naomi sat up and dragged at his arm.

"Can you help me? Can you help me?" she gasped imploringly.
"Oh, I thought you'd never come! I was skeered I'd die before
you got here--die and go to hell. I didn't know before today
that I was dying. None of those cowards would tell me.
Can you help me?"

"If I cannot, God can," said Mr. Leonard gently. He felt himself
very helpless and inefficient before this awful terror and frenzy.
He had seen sad death-beds--troubled death-beds--ay, and despairing
death-beds, but never anything like this. "God!" Naomi's voice
shrilled terribly as she uttered the name. "I can't go to God
for help. Oh, I'm skeered of hell, but I'm skeereder still
of God. I'd rather go to hell a thousand times over than face God
after the life I've lived. I tell you, I'm sorry for living wicked--
I was always sorry for it all the time. There ain't never been
a moment I wasn't sorry, though nobody would believe it.
I was driven on by fiends of hell. Oh, you don't understand--
you CAN'T understand--but I was always sorry!"

"If you repent, that is all that is necessary. God will forgive
you if you ask Him."

"No, He can't! Sins like mine can't be forgiven. He can't--
and He won't."

"He can and He will. He is a God of love, Naomi."

"No," said Naomi with stubborn conviction. "He isn't a God of love
at all. That's why I'm skeered of him. No, no. He's a God of wrath
and justice and punishment. Love! There ain't no such thing as love!
I've never found it on earth, and I don't believe it's to be
found in God."

"Naomi, God loves us like a father."

"Like MY father?" Naomi's shrill laughter, pealing through
the still room, was hideous to hear.

The old minister shuddered.

"No--no! As a kind, tender, all-wise father, Naomi--as you would
have loved your little child if it had lived."

Naomi cowered and moaned.

"Oh, I wish I could believe THAT. I wouldn't be frightened
if I could believe that. MAKE me believe it. Surely you can
make me believe that there's love and forgiveness in God if you
believe it yourself."

"Jesus Christ forgave and loved the Magdalen, Naomi."

"Jesus Christ? Oh, I ain't afraid of HIM. Yes, HE could
understand and forgive. He was half human. I tell you,
it's God I'm skeered of."

"They are one and the same," said Mr. Leonard helplessly.
He knew he could not make Naomi realize it. This anguished
death-bed was no place for a theological exposition on the mysteries
of the Trinity.

"Christ died for you, Naomi. He bore your sins in His own body
on the cross."

"We bear our own sins," said Naomi fiercely. "I've borne
mine all my life--and I'll bear them for all eternity.
I can't believe anything else. I CAN'T believe God can forgive me.
I've ruined people body and soul--I've broken hearts and poisoned homes--
I'm worse than a murderess. No--no--no, there's no hope for me."
Her voice rose again into that shrill, intolerable shriek.
"I've got to go to hell. It ain't so much the fire I'm skeered
of as the outer darkness. I've always been so skeered of darkness--
it's so full of awful things and thoughts. Oh, there ain't nobody
to help me! Man ain't no good and I'm too skeered of God."

She wrung her hands. Mr. Leonard walked up and down the room
in the keenest anguish of spirit he had ever known.
What could he do? What could he say? There was healing
and peace in his religion for this woman as for all others,
but he could express it in no language which this tortured soul
could understand. He looked at her writhing face; he looked
at the idiot girl chuckling to herself at the foot of the bed;
he looked through the open door to the remote, starlit night--
and a horrible sense of utter helplessness overcame him.
He could do nothing--nothing! In all his life he had never known
such bitterness of soul as the realization brought home to him.

"What is the good of you if you can't help me?" moaned the dying woman.
"Pray--pray--pray!" she shrilled suddenly.

Mr. Leonard dropped on his knees by the bed. He did not know
what to say. No prayer that he had ever prayed was of use here.
The old, beautiful formulas, which had soothed and helped
the passing of many a soul, were naught save idle, empty words
to Naomi Clark. In his anguish of mind Stephen Leonard gasped
out the briefest and sincerest prayer his lips had ever uttered.

"O, God, our Father! Help this woman. Speak to her in a tongue
which she can understand."



A beautiful, white face appeared for a moment in the light
that streamed out of the doorway into the darkness of the night.
No one noticed it, and it quickly drew back into the shadow.
Suddenly, Naomi fell back on her pillow, her lips blue,
her face horribly pinched, her eyes rolled up in her head.
Maggie started up, pushed Mr. Leonard aside, and proceeded
to administer some remedy with surprising skill and deftness.
Mr. Leonard, believing Naomi to be dying, went to the door,
feeling sick and bruised in soul.

Presently a figure stole out into the light.

"Felix, is that you?" said Mr. Leonard in a startled tone.

"Yes, sir." Felix came up to the stone step.
"Janet got frightened what you might fall on that rough road
after dark, so she made me come after you with a lantern.
I've been waiting behind the point, but at last I thought I'd
better come and see if you would be staying much longer.
If you will be, I'll go back to Janet and leave the lantern
here with you." "Yes, that will be the best thing to do.
I may not be ready to go home for some time yet," said Mr. Leonard,
thinking that the death-bed of sin behind him was no sight
for Felix's young eyes.

"Is that your grandson you're talking to?" Naomi spoke clearly
and strongly. The spasm had passed. "If it is, bring him in.
I want to see him."

Reluctantly, Mr. Leonard signed Felix to enter. The boy stood
by Naomi's bed and looked down at her with sympathetic eyes.
But at first she did not look at him--she looked past him
at the minister.

"I might have died in that spell," she said, with sullen
reproach in her voice, "and if I had, I'd been in hell now.
You can't help me--I'm done with you. There ain't any hope for me,
and I know it now."

She turned to Felix.

"Take down that fiddle on the wall and play something for me,"
she said imperiously. "I'm dying--and I'm going to hell--
and I don't want to think of it. Play me something
to take my thoughts off it--I don't care what you play.
I was always fond of music--there was always something in it
for me I never found anywhere else."

Felix looked at his grandfather. The old man nodded,
he felt too ashamed to speak; he sat with his fine silver head
in his hands, while Felix took down and tuned the old violin,
on which so many godless lilts had been played in many a wild revel.
Mr. Leonard felt that he had failed his religion.
He could not give Naomi the help that was in it for her.

Felix drew the bow softly, perplexedly over the strings.
He had no idea what he should play. Then his eyes were caught
and held by Naomi's burning, mesmeric, blue gaze as she lay on her
crumpled pillow. A strange, inspired look came over the boy's face.
He began to play as if it were not he who played, but some
mightier power, of which he was but the passive instrument.

Sweet and soft and wonderful was the music that stole through
the room. Mr. Leonard forgot his heartbreak and listened
to it in puzzled amazement. He had never heard anything
like it before. How could the child play like that?
He looked at Naomi and marvelled at the change in her face.
The fear and frenzy were going out of it; she listened breathlessly,
never taking her eyes from Felix. At the foot of the bed
the idiot girl sat with tears on her cheeks.

In that strange music was the joy of the innocent, mirthful childhood,
blent with the laughter of waves and the call of glad winds.
Then it held the wild, wayward dreams of youth, sweet and pure
in all their wildness and waywardness. They were followed by a
rapture of young love--all-surrendering, all-sacrificing love.
The music changed. It held the torture of unshed tears,
the anguish of a heart deceived and desolate. Mr. Leonard almost
put his hands over his ears to shut out its intolerable poignancy.
But on the dying woman's face was only a strange relief, as if some dumb,
long-hidden pain had at last won to the healing of utterance.

The sullen indifference of despair came next, the bitterness of
smouldering revolt and misery, the reckless casting away of all good.
There was something indescribably evil in the music now--
so evil that Mr. Leonard's white soul shuddered away in loathing,
and Maggie cowered and whined like a frightened animal.

Again the music changed. And in it now there was agony and fear--
and repentance and a cry for pardon. To Mr. Leonard there
was something strangely familiar in it. He struggled to
recall where he had heard it before; then he suddenly knew--
he had heard it before Felix came in Naomi's terrible words!
He looked at his grandson with something like awe. Here was
a power of which he knew nothing--a strange and dreadful power.
Was it of God? Or of Satan?

For the last time the music changed. And now it was not music at all--
it was a great, infinite forgiveness, an all-comprehending love.
It was healing for a sick soul; it was light and hope and peace.
A Bible text, seemingly incongruous, came into Mr. Leonard's mind--"This
is the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."

Felix lowered the violin and dropped wearily on a chair by the bed.
The inspired light faded from his face; once more he was only a
tired boy. But Stephen Leonard was on his knees, sobbing like a child;
and Naomi Clark was lying still, with her hands clasped over her breast.

"I understand now," she said very softly. "I couldn't see it before--
and now it's so plain. I just FEEL it. God IS a God of love.
He can forgive anybody--even me--even me. He knows all about it.
I ain't skeered any more. He just loves me and forgives me as I'd have
loved and forgiven my baby if she'd lived, no matter how bad she was,
or what she did. The minister told me that but I couldn't believe it.
I KNOW it now. And He sent you here to-night, boy, to tell it to me
in a way that I could feel it."



Naomi Clark died just as the dawn came up over the sea.
Mr. Leonard rose from his watch at her bedside and went to the door.
Before him spread the harbour, gray and austere in the faint light,
but afar out the sun was rending asunder the milk-white mists
in which the sea was scarfed, and under it was a virgin glow
of sparkling water.

The fir trees on the point moved softly and whispered together.
The whole world sang of spring and resurrection and life;
and behind him Naomi Clark's dead face took on the peace
that passes understanding.

The old minister and his grandson walked home together in a silence
that neither wished to break. Janet Andrews gave them a good scolding
and an excellent breakfast. Then she ordered them both to bed;
but Mr. Leonard, smiling at her, said:

"Presently, Janet, presently. But now, take this key,
go up to the black chest in the garret, and bring me what you
will find there."

When Janet had gone, he turned to Felix.

"Felix, would you like to study music as your life-work?"

Felix looked up, with a transfiguring flush on his wan face.

"Oh, grandfather! Oh, grandfather!"

"You may do so, my child. After this night I dare not hinder you.
Go with my blessing, and may God guide and keep you, and make you strong
to do His work and tell His message to humanity in your own appointed way.
It is not the way I desired for you--but I see that I was mistaken.
Old Abel spoke truly when he said there was a Christ in your violin
as well as a devil. I understand what he meant now."

He turned to meet Janet, who came into the study with a violin.
Felix's heart throbbed; he recognized it. Mr. Leonard took it
from Janet and held it out to the boy.

"This is your father's violin, Felix. See to it that you never
make your music the servant of the power of evil--never debase
it to unworthy ends. For your responsibility is as your gift,
and God will exact the accounting of it from you. Speak to
the world in your own tongue through it, with truth and sincerity;
and all I have hoped for you will be abundantly fulfilled."





IV. Little Joscelyn


"It simply isn't to be thought of, Aunty Nan,"
said Mrs. William Morrison decisively. Mrs. William Morrison
was one of those people who always speak decisively.
If they merely announce that they are going to peel the potatoes
for dinner their hearers realize that there is no possible escape
for the potatoes. Moreover, these people are always given
their full title by everybody. William Morrison was called Billy
oftener than not; but, if you had asked for Mrs. Billy Morrison,
nobody in Avonlea would have known what you meant at first guess.

"You must see that for yourself, Aunty," went on Mrs. William, hulling
strawberries nimbly with her large, firm, white fingers as she talked.
Mrs. William always improved every shining moment. "It is ten miles
to Kensington, and just think how late you would be getting back.
You are not able for such a drive. You wouldn't get over it for a month.
You know you are anything but strong this summer."

Aunty Nan sighed, and patted the tiny, furry, gray morsel of a
kitten in her lap with trembling fingers. She knew, better than
anyone else could know it, that she was not strong that summer.
In her secret soul, Aunty Nan, sweet and frail and timid under the burden
of her seventy years, felt with mysterious unmistakable prescience
that it was to be her last summer at the Gull Point Farm. But that was
only the more reason why she should go to hear little Joscelyn sing;
she would never have another chance. And oh, to hear little Joscelyn
sing just once--Joscelyn, whose voice was delighting thousands
out in the big world, just as in the years gone by it had delighted
Aunty Nan and the dwellers at the Gull Point Farm for a whole golden
summer with carols at dawn and dusk about the old place!

"Oh, I know I'm not very strong, Maria." said Aunty Nan pleadingly,
"but I am strong enough for that. Indeed I am. I could stay
at Kensington over night with George's folks, you know, and so it
wouldn't tire me much. I do so want to hear Joscelyn sing.
Oh, how I love little Joscelyn."

"It passes my understanding, the way you hanker after that child,"
cried Mrs. William impatiently. "Why, she was a perfect stranger
to you when she came here, and she was here only one summer!"

"But oh, such a summer!" said Aunty Nan softly. "We all loved
little Joscelyn. She just seemed like one of our own.
She was one of God's children, carrying love with them everywhere.
In some ways that little Anne Shirley the Cuthberts have got up
there at Green Gables reminds me of her, though in other ways
they're not a bit alike. Joscelyn was a beauty."

"Well, that Shirley snippet certainly isn't that,"
said Mrs. William sarcastically. "And if Joscelyn's tongue
was one third as long as Anne Shirley's the wonder to me is
that she didn't talk you all to death out of hand."

"Little Joscelyn wasn't much of a talker," said Aunty Nan dreamily.
"She was kind of a quiet child. But you remember what she did say.
And I've never forgotten little Joscelyn."

Mrs. William shrugged her plump, shapely shoulders.

"Well, it was fifteen years ago, Aunty Nan, and Joscelyn can't be very
'little' now. She is a famous woman, and she has forgotten all about you,
you can be sure of that."

"Joscelyn wasn't the kind that forgets," said Aunty Nan loyally.
"And, anyway, the point is, _I_ haven't forgotten HER. Oh, Maria, I've
longed for years and years just to hear her sing once more. It seems
as if I MUST hear my little Joscelyn sing once again before I die.
I've never had the chance before and I never will have it again.
Do please ask William to take me to Kensington."

"Dear me, Aunty Nan, this is really childish," said Mrs. William,
whisking her bowlful of berries into the pantry. "You must let
other folks be the judge of what is best for you now. You aren't
strong enough to drive to Kensington, and, even if you were, you know
well enough that William couldn't go to Kensington to-morrow night.
He has got to attend that political meeting at Newbridge. They can't
do without him."

"Jordan could take me to Kensington," pleaded Aunty Nan,
with very unusual persistence.

"Nonsense! You couldn't go to Kensington with the hired man.
Now, Aunty Nan, do be reasonable. Aren't William and I kind to you?
Don't we do everything for your comfort?"

"Yes, oh, yes," admitted Aunty Nan deprecatingly.

"Well, then, you ought to be guided by our opinion.
And you must just give up thinking about the Kensington concert,
Aunty, and not worry yourself and me about it any more.
I am going down to the shore field now to call William to tea.
Just keep an eye on the baby in chance he wakes up, and see
that the teapot doesn't boil over."

Mrs. William whisked out of the kitchen, pretending not to see the tears
that were falling over Aunty Nan's withered pink cheeks. Aunty Nan
was really getting very childish, Mrs. William reflected, as she marched
down to the shore field. Why, she cried now about every little thing!
And such a notion--to want to go to the Old Timers' concert at Kensington
and be so set on it! Really, it was hard to put up with her whims.
Mrs. William sighed virtuously.

As for Aunty Nan, she sat alone in the kitchen, and cried bitterly,
as only lonely old age can cry. It seemed to her that she could
not bear it, that she MUST go to Kensington. But she knew
that it was not to be, since Mrs. William had decided otherwise.
Mrs. William's word was law at Gull Point Farm.

"What's the matter with my old Aunty Nan?" cried a hearty young
voice from the doorway. Jordan Sloane stood there, his round,
freckled face looking as anxious and sympathetic as it was
possible for such a very round, very freckled face to look.
Jordan was the Morrisons' hired boy that summer, and he
worshipped Aunty Nan.

"Oh, Jordan," sobbed Aunty Nan, who was not above telling her troubles
to the hired help, although Mrs. William thought she ought to be,
"I can't go to Kensington to-morrow night to hear little Joscelyn
sing at the Old Timers' concert. Maria says I can't."

"That's too bad," said Jordan. "Old cat," he muttered after the
retreating and serenely unconscious Mrs. William. Then he shambled
in and sat down on the sofa beside Aunty Nan.

"There, there, don't cry," he said, patting her thin little shoulder
with his big, sunburned paw. "You'll make yourself sick if you go
on crying, and we can't get along without you at Gull Point Farm."

Aunty Nan smiled wanly.

"I'm afraid you'll soon have to get on without me, Jordan. I'm not
going to be here very long now. No, I'm not, Jordan, I know it.
Something tells me so very plainly. But I would be willing to go--
glad to go, for I'm very tired, Jordan--if I could only have heard
little Joscelyn sing once more."

"Why are you so set on hearing her?" asked Jordan. "She ain't no kin
to you, is she?"

"No, but dearer to me--dearer to me than many of my own.
Maria thinks that is silly, but you wouldn't if you'd known
her, Jordan. Even Maria herself wouldn't, if she had known her.
It is fifteen years since she came here one summer to board.
She was a child of thirteen then, and hadn't any relations
except an old uncle who sent her to school in winter and
boarded her out in summer, and didn't care a rap about her.
The child was just starving for love, Jordan, and she got it here.
William and his brothers were just children then, and they
hadn't any sister. We all just worshipped her. She was
so sweet, Jordan. And pretty, oh my! like a little girl in a picture,
with great long curls, all black and purply and fine as spun silk,
and big dark eyes, and such pink cheeks--real wild rose cheeks.
And sing! My land! But couldn't she sing! Always singing,
every hour of the day that voice was ringing round the old place.
I used to hold my breath to hear it. She always said that she meant
to be a famous singer some day, and I never doubted it a mite.
It was born in her. Sunday evening she used to sing hymns for us.
Oh, Jordan, it makes my old heart young again to remember it.
A sweet child she was, my little Joscelyn! She used to write
me for three or four years after she went away, but I haven't
heard a word from her for long and long. I daresay she has
forgotten me, as Maria says. 'Twouldn't be any wonder.
But I haven't forgotten her, and oh, I want to see and hear
her terrible much. She is to sing at the Old Timers'
concert to-morrow night at Kensington. The folks who are
getting the concert up are friends of hers, or, of course,
she'd never have come to a little country village.
Only sixteen miles away--and I can't go."

Jordan couldn't think of anything to say. He reflected savagely
that if he had a horse of his own he would take Aunty Nan
to Kensington, Mrs. William or no Mrs. William. Though, to be sure,
it WAS a long drive for her; and she was looking very frail this summer.

"Ain't going to last long," muttered Jordan, making his escape
by the porch door as Mrs. William puffed in by the other.
"The sweetest old creetur that ever was created'll go when she goes.
Yah, ye old madam, I'd like to give you a piece of my mind,
that I would!"

This last was for Mrs. William, but was delivered in a prudent undertone.
Jordan detested Mrs. William, but she was a power to be reckoned with,
all the same. Meek, easy-going Billy Morrison did just what his wife
told him to.

So Aunty Nan did not get to Kensington to hear little Joscelyn sing.
She said nothing more about it but after that night she seemed
to fail very rapidly. Mrs. William said it was the hot weather,
and that Aunty Nan gave way too easily. But Aunty Nan could not help
giving way now; she was very, very tired. Even her knitting wearied her.
She would sit for hours in her rocking chair with the gray kitten
in her lap, looking out of the window with dreamy, unseeing eyes.
She talked to herself a good deal, generally about little Joscelyn.
Mrs. William told Avonlea folk that Aunty Nan had got terribly childish
and always accompanied the remark with a sigh that intimated how much she,
Mrs. William, had to contend with.

Justice must be done to Mrs. William, however. She was not unkind
to Aunty Nan; on the contrary, she was very kind to her in the letter.
Her comfort was scrupulously attended to, and Mrs. William had
the grace to utter none of her complaints in the old woman's hearing.
If Aunty Nan felt the absence of the spirit she never murmured at it.

One day, when the Avonlea slopes were golden-hued with the
ripened harvest, Aunty Nan did not get up. She complained
of nothing but great weariness. Mrs. William remarked to her
husband that if SHE lay in bed every day she felt tired,
there wouldn't be much done at Gull Point Farm. But she prepared
an excellent breakfast and carried it patiently up to Aunty Nan,
who ate little of it.

After dinner Jordan crept up by way of the back stairs to see her.
Aunty Nan was lying with her eyes fixed on the pale pink climbing
roses that nodded about the window. When she saw Jordan she smiled.

"Them roses put me so much in mind of little Joscelyn,"
she said softly. "She loved them so. If I could only see her!
Oh, Jordan, if I could only see her! Maria says it's terrible
childish to be always harping on that string, and mebbe it is.
But--oh, Jordan, there's such a hunger in my heart for her,
such a hunger!"

Jordan felt a queer sensation in his throat, and twisted his
ragged straw hat about in his big hands. Just then a vague idea
which had hovered in his brain all day crystallized into decision.
But all he said was:

"I hope you'll feel better soon, Aunty Nan."

"Oh, yes, Jordan dear, I'll be better soon," said Aunty Nan with her own
sweet smile. "'The inhabitant shall not say I am sick,' you know.
But if I could only see little Joscelyn first!"

Jordan went out and hurried down-stairs. Billy Morrison was in the stable,
when Jordan stuck his head over the half-door.

"Say, can I have the rest of the day off, sir? I want to
go to Kensington."

"Well, I don't mind," said Billy Morrison amiably.
"May's well get you jaunting done 'fore harvest comes on.
And here, Jord; take this quarter and get some oranges for
Aunty Nan. Needn't mention it to headquarters."

Billy Morrison's face was solemn, but Jordan winked as he
pocketed the money.

"If I've any luck, I'll bring her something that'll do her more good
than the oranges," he muttered, as he hurried off to the pasture.
Jordan had a horse of his own now, a rather bony nag, answering to
the name of Dan. Billy Morrison had agreed to pasture the animal
if Jordan used him in the farm work, an arrangement scoffed at
by Mrs. William in no measured terms.

Jordan hitched Dan into the second best buggy, dressed himself
in his Sunday clothes, and drove off. On the road he re-read
a paragraph he had clipped from the Charlottetown Daily Enterprise
of the previous day.

"Joscelyn Burnett, the famous contralto, is spending a few days
in Kensington on her return from her Maritime concert tour.
She is the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Bromley, of The Beeches."

"Now if I can get there in time," said Jordan emphatically.

Jordan got to Kensington, put Dan up in a livery stable, and inquired
the way to The Beeches. He felt rather nervous when he found it,
it was such a stately, imposing place, set back from the street
in an emerald green seclusion of beautiful grounds.

"Fancy me stalking up to that front door and asking for
Miss Joscelyn Burnett," grinned Jordan sheepishly. "Mebbe they'll
tell me to go around to the back and inquire for the cook.
But you're going just the same, Jordan Sloane, and no skulking.
March right up now. Think of Aunty Nan and don't let
style down you."

A pert-looking maid answered Jordan's ring, and stared at him
when he asked for Miss Burnett.

"I don't think you can see her," she said shortly, scanning his
country cut of hair and clothes rather superciliously.
"What is your business with her?"

The maid's scorn roused Jordan's "dander," as he would have expressed it.

"I'll tell her that when I see her," he retorted coolly.
"Just you tell her that I've a message for her from Aunty Nan Morrison
of Gull Point Farm, Avonlea. If she hain't forgot, that'll fetch her.
You might as well hurry up, if you please, I've not overly
too much time."

The pert maid decided to be civil at least, and invited Jordan
to enter. But she left him standing in the hall while she went
in search of Miss Burnett. Jordan gazed about him in amazement.
He had never been in any place like this before. The hall
was wonderful enough, and through the open doors on either
hand stretched vistas of lovely rooms that, to Jordan's eyes,
looked like those of a palace.

"Gee whiz! How do they ever move around without knocking things over?"

Then Joscelyn Burnett came, and Jordan forgot everything else. This tall,
beautiful woman, in her silken draperies, with a face like nothing
Jordan had ever seen, or even dreamed about,--could this be Aunty Nan's
little Joscelyn? Jordan's round, freckled countenance grew crimson.
He felt horribly tonguetied and embarrassed. What could he say to her?
How could he say it?

Joscelyn Burnett looked at him with her large, dark eyes,--
the eyes of a woman who had suffered much, and learned much,
and won through struggle to victory.

"You have come from Aunty Nan?" she said. "Oh, I am so glad to hear
from her. Is she well? Come in here and tell me all about her."

She turned toward one of those fairy-like rooms, but Jordan
interrupted her desperately.

"Oh, not in there, ma'am. I'd never get it out. Just let me blunder
through it out here someways. Yes'm, Aunty Nan, she ain't very well.
She's--she's dying, I guess. And she's longing for you night and day.
Seems as if she couldn't die in peace without seeing you.
She wanted to get to Kensington to hear you sing, but that old cat
of a Mrs. William--begging you pardon, ma'am--wouldn't let her come.
She's always talking of you. If you can come out to Gull Point Farm
and see her, I'll be most awful obliged to you, ma'am."

Joscelyn Burnett looked troubled. She had not forgotten Gull Point Farm,
nor Aunty Nan; but for years the memory had been dim, crowded into the
background of consciousness by the more exciting events of her busy life.
Now it came back with a rush. She recalled it all tenderly--
the peace and beauty and love of that olden summer, and sweet Aunty Nan,
so very wise in the lore of all things simple and good and true.
For the moment Joscelyn Burnett was a lonely, hungry-hearted little
girl again, seeking for love and finding it not, until Aunty Nan had
taken her into her great mother-heart and taught her its meaning.

"Oh, I don't know," she said perplexedly. "If you had come sooner--
I leave on the 11:30 train tonight. I MUST leave by then or I shall
not reach Montreal in time to fill a very important engagement.
And yet I must see Aunty Nan, too. I have been careless and neglectful.
I might have gone to see her before. How can we manage it?"

"I'll bring you back to Kensington in time to catch that train,"
said Jordan eagerly. "There's nothing I wouldn't do for
Aunty Nan--me and Dan. Yes, sir, you'll get back in time.
Just think of Aunty Nan's face when she sees you!"

"I will come," said the great singer, gently.

It was sunset when they reached Gull Point Farm. An arc of warm
gold was over the spruces behind the house. Mrs. William
was out in the barn-yard, milking, and the house was deserted,
save for the sleeping baby in the kitchen and the little old
woman with the watchful eyes in the up-stairs room.

"This way, ma'am," said Jordan, inwardly congratulating himself
that the coast was clear. "I'll take you right up to her room."

Up-stairs, Joscelyn tapped at the half-open door and went in.
Before it closed behind her, Jordan heard Aunty Nan say,
"Joscelyn! Little Joscelyn!" in a tone that made him choke again.
He stumbled thankfully down-stairs, to be pounced upon by
Mrs. William in the kitchen.

"Jordan Sloane, who was that stylish woman you drove into the yard with?
And what have you done with her?"

"That was Miss Joscelyn Burnett," said Jordan, expanding himself.
This was his hour of triumph over Mrs. William. "I went to Kensington
and brung her out to see Aunty Nan. She's up with her now."

"Dear me," said Mrs. William helplessly. "And me in my milking rig!
Jordan, for pity's sake, hold the baby while I go and put
on my black silk. You might have given a body some warning.
I declare I don't know which is the greatest idiot, you or Aunty Nan!"

As Mrs. William flounced out of the kitchen, Jordan took his
satisfaction in a quiet laugh.

Up-stairs in the little room was a great glory of sunset and gladness
of human hearts. Joscelyn was kneeling by the bed, with her arms
about Aunty Nan; and Aunty Nan, with her face all irradiated,
was stroking Joscelyn's dark hair fondly.

"O, little Joscelyn," she murmured, "it seems too good to be true.
It seems like a beautiful dream. I knew you the minute you
opened the door, my dearie. You haven't changed a bit.
And you're a famous singer now, little Joscelyn! I always knew
you would be. Oh, I want you to sing a piece for me--just one,
won't you, dearie? Sing that piece people like to hear you sing best.
I forget the name, but I've read about it in the papers.
Sing it for me, little Joscelyn."

And Joscelyn, standing by Aunty Nan's bed, in the sunset light,
sang the song she had sung to many a brilliant audience on many
a noted concert-platform--sang it as even she had never sung before,
while Aunty Nan lay and listened beatifically, and downstairs
even Mrs. William held her breath, entranced by the exquisite
melody that floated through the old farmhouse.

"O, little Joscelyn!" breathed Aunty Nan in rapture, when the song ended.

Joscelyn knelt by her again and they had a long talk of old days.
One by one they recalled the memories of that vanished summer.
The past gave up its tears and its laughter. Heart and fancy alike went
roaming through the ways of the long ago. Aunty Nan was perfectly happy.
And then Joscelyn told her all the story of her struggles and triumphs
since they had parted.

When the moonlight began to creep in through the low window,
Aunty Nan put out her hand and touched Joscelyn's bowed head.

"Little Joscelyn," she whispered, "if it ain't asking too much,
I want you to sing just one other piece. Do you remember when you
were here how we sung hymns in the parlour every Sunday night,
and my favourite always was 'The Sands of Time are Sinking?' I ain't
never forgot how you used to sing that, and I want to hear it
just once again, dearie. Sing it for me, little Joscelyn."

Joscelyn rose and went to the window. Lifting back the curtain,
she stood in the splendour of the moonlight, and sang the grand old hymn.
At first Aunty Nan beat time to it feebly on the counterpane;
but when Joscelyn came to the verse, "With mercy and with judgment,"
she folded her hands over her breast and smiled.

When the hymn ended, Joscelyn came over to the bed.

"I am afraid I must say good-bye now, Aunty Nan," she said.

Then she saw that Aunty Nan had fallen asleep. She would not waken her,
but she took from her breast the cluster of crimson roses she wore
and slipped them gently between the toil-worn fingers.

"Good-bye, dear, sweet mother-heart," she murmured.

Down-stairs she met Mrs. William splendid in rustling black silk,
her broad, rubicund face smiling, overflowing with apologies and welcomes,
which Joscelyn cut short coldly.

"Thank you, Mrs. Morrison, but I cannot possibly stay longer.
No, thank you, I don't care for any refreshments.
Jordan is going to take me back to Kensington at once.
I came out to see Aunty Nan." "I'm certain she'd be delighted,"
said Mrs. William effusively. "She's been talking about
you for weeks."

"Yes, it has made her very happy," said Joscelyn gravely.
"And it has made me happy, too. I love Aunty Nan, Mrs. Morrison,
and I owe her much. In all my life I have never met a woman
so purely, unselfishly good and noble and true."

"Fancy now," said Mrs. William, rather overcome at hearing
this great singer pronounce such an encomium on quiet,
timid old Aunty Nan.

Jordan drove Joscelyn back to Kensington; and up-stairs in her room
Aunty Nan slept, with that rapt smile on her face and Joscelyn's
red roses in her hands. Thus it was that Mrs. William found her,
going in the next morning with her breakfast. The sunlight crept
over the pillow, lighting up the sweet old face and silver hair,
and stealing downward to the faded red roses on her breast.
Smiling and peaceful and happy lay Aunty Nan, for she had fallen on
the sleep that knows no earthy wakening, while little Joscelyn sang.





V. The Winning of Lucinda


The marriage of a Penhallow was always the signal for a gathering
of the Penhallows. From the uttermost parts of the earth they
would come--Penhallows by birth, and Penhallows by marriage
and Penhallows by ancestry. East Grafton was the ancient habitat
of the race, and Penhallow Grange, where "old" John Penhallow lived,
was a Mecca to them.

As for the family itself, the exact kinship of all its various
branches and ramifications was a hard thing to define.
Old Uncle Julius Penhallow was looked upon as a veritable wonder
because he carried it all in his head and could tell on sight just
what relation any one Penhallow was to any other Penhallow. The rest
made a blind guess at it, for the most part, and the younger
Penhallows let it go at loose cousinship.

In this instance it was Alice Penhallow, daughter of "young"
John Penhallow, who was to be married. Alice was a nice girl,
but she and her wedding only pertain to this story in so far
as they furnish a background for Lucinda; hence nothing more
need be said of her.

On the afternoon of her wedding day--the Penhallows held to the good,
old-fashioned custom of evening weddings with a rousing dance afterwards--
Penhallow Grange was filled to overflowing with guests who had come there
to have tea and rest themselves before going down to "young" John's. Many
of them had driven fifty miles. In the big autumnal orchard the younger
fry foregathered and chatted and coquetted. Up-stairs, in "old"
Mrs. John's bedroom, she and her married daughters held high conclave.
"Old" John had established himself with his sons and sons-in-law
in the parlour, and the three daughters-in-law were making themselves
at home in the blue sitting-room, ear-deep in harmless family gossip.
Lucinda and Romney Penhallow were also there.

Thin Mrs. Nathaniel Penhallow sat in a rocking chair and toasted
her toes at the grate, for the brilliant autumn afternoon was
slightly chilly and Lucinda, as usual, had the window open.
She and plump Mrs. Frederick Penhallow did most of the talking.
Mrs. George Penhallow being rather out of it by reason of her newness.
She was George Penhallow's second wife, married only a year.
Hence, her contributions to the conversation were rather spasmodic,
hurled in, as it were, by dead reckoning, being sometimes appropriate
and sometimes savouring of a point of view not strictly Penhallowesque.

Romney Penhallow was sitting in a corner, listening to the chatter
of the women, with the inscrutable smile that always vexed
Mrs. Frederick. Mrs. George wondered within herself what he did
there among the women. She also wondered just where he belonged
on the family tree. He was not one of the uncles, yet he could
not be much younger than George.

"Forty, if he is a day," was Mrs. George's mental dictum,
"but a very handsome and fascinating man. I never saw such
a splendid chin and dimple."

Lucinda, with bronze-colored hair and the whitest of skins,
defiant of merciless sunlight and revelling in the crisp air,
sat on the sill of the open window behind the crimson vine leaves,
looking out into the garden, where dahlias flamed and asters broke
into waves of purple and snow. The ruddy light of the autumn
afternoon gave a sheen to the waves of her hair and brought out
the exceeding purity of her Greek outlines.

Mrs. George knew who Lucinda was--a cousin of the second generation,
and, in spite of her thirty-five years, the acknowledged beauty
of the whole Penhallow connection.

She was one of those rare women who keep their loveliness unmarred
by the passage of years. She had ripened and matured, but she
had not grown old. The older Penhallows were still inclined,
from sheer force of habit, to look upon her as a girl,
and the younger Penhallows hailed her as one of themselves.
Yet Lucinda never aped girlishness; good taste and a strong
sense of humour preserved her amid many temptations thereto.
She was simply a beautiful, fully developed woman, with whom
Time had declared a truce, young with a mellow youth which had
nothing to do with years.

Mrs. George liked and admired Lucinda. Now, when Mrs. George
liked and admired any person, it was a matter of necessity with
her to impart her opinions to the most convenient confidant.
In this case it was Romney Penhallow to whom Mrs. George remarked sweetly:

"Really, don't you think our Lucinda is looking remarkably
well this fall?"

It seemed a very harmless, inane, well-meant question.
Poor Mrs. George might well be excused for feeling bewildered
over the effect. Romney gathered his long legs together,
stood up, and swept the unfortunate speaker a crushing Penhallow
bow of state.

"Far be it from me to disagree with the opinion of a lady--
especially when it concerns another lady," he said, as he left
the blue room.

Overcome by the mordant satire in his tone, Mrs. George glanced
speechlessly at Lucinda. Behold, Lucinda had squarely turned
her back on the party and was gazing out into the garden,
with a very decided flush on the snowy curves of her neck and cheek.
Then Mrs. George looked at her sisters-in-law. They were regarding her
with the tolerant amusement they might bestow on a blundering child.
Mrs. George experienced that subtle prescience whereby it is given
us to know that we have put our foot in it. She felt herself
turning an uncomfortable brick-red. What Penhallow skeleton had she
unwittingly jangled? Why, oh, why, was it such an evident breach
of the proprieties to praise Lucinda?

Mrs. George was devoutly thankful that a summons to the tea-table
rescued her from her mire of embarrassment. The meal was spoiled
for her, however; the mortifying recollection of her mysterious
blunder conspired with her curiosity to banish appetite.
As soon as possible after tea she decoyed Mrs. Frederick out into
the garden and in the dahlia walk solemnly demanded the reason
of it all.

Mrs. Frederick indulged in a laugh which put the mettle of her festal
brown silk seams to the test.

"My dear Cecilia, it was SO amusing," she said, a little patronizingly.

"But WHY!" cried Mrs. George, resenting the patronage and the mystery.
"What was so dreadful in what I said? Or so funny? And WHO is this
Romney Penhallow who mustn't be spoken to?"

"Oh, Romney is one of the Charlottetown Penhallows,"
explained Mrs. Frederick. "He is a lawyer there. He is a
first cousin of Lucinda's and a second of George's--or is he?
Oh, bother! You must go to Uncle John if you want the genealogy.
I'm in a chronic muddle concerning Penhallow relationship.
And, as for Romney, of course you can speak to him about anything
you like except Lucinda. Oh, you innocent! To ask him if he didn't
think Lucinda was looking well! And right before her, too!
Of course he thought you did it on purpose to tease him.
That was what made him so savage and sarcastic."

"But WHY?" persisted Mrs. George, sticking tenaciously to her point.

"Hasn't George told you?"

"No," said George's wife in mild exasperation. "George has spent
most of his time since we were married telling me odd things about
the Penhallows, but he hasn't got to that yet, evidently."

"Why, my dear, it is our family romance. Lucinda and Romney are in love
with each other. They have been in love with each other for fifteen
years and in all that time they have never spoken to each other once!"

"Dear me!" murmured Mrs. George, feeling the inadequacy of mere language.
Was this a Penhallow method of courtship? "But WHY?"

"They had a quarrel fifteen years ago," said Mrs. Frederick patiently.
"Nobody knows how it originated or anything about it except
that Lucinda herself admitted it to us afterwards. But, in the
first flush of her rage, she told Romney that she would never
speak to him again as long as she lived. And HE said he would
never speak to her until she spoke first--because, you see,
as she was in the wrong she ought to make the first advance.
And they never have spoken. Everybody in the connection, I suppose,
has taken turns trying to reconcile them, but nobody has succeeded.
I don't believe that Romney has ever so much as THOUGHT of any other
woman in his whole life, and certainly Lucinda has never thought
of any other man. You will notice she still wears Romney's ring.
They're practically engaged still, of course. And Romney said once
that if Lucinda would just say one word, no matter what it was,
even if it were something insulting, he would speak, too, and beg
her pardon for his share in the quarrel--because then, you see,
he would not be breaking his word. He hasn't referred to the matter
for years, but I presume that he is of the same mind still.
And they are just as much in love with each other as they ever were.
He's always hanging about where she is--when other people are there,
too, that is. He avoids her like a plague when she is alone.
That was why he was stuck out in the blue room with us to-day.
There doesn't seem to be a particle of resentment between them.
If Lucinda would only speak! But that Lucinda will not do."

"Don't you think she will yet?" said Mrs. George.

Mrs. Frederick shook her crimped head sagely.

"Not now. The whole thing has hardened too long.
Her pride will never let her speak. We used to hope she would
be tricked into it by forgetfulness or accident--we used to lay
traps for her--but all to no effect. It is such a shame, too.
They were made for each other. Do you know, I get cross
when I begin to thrash the whole silly affair over like this.
Doesn't it sound as if we were talking of the quarrel of two
school-children? Of late years we have learned that it does not do
to speak of Lucinda to Romney, even in the most commonplace way.
He seems to resent it."

"HE ought to speak," cried Mrs. George warmly. "Even if she
were in the wrong ten times over, he ought to overlook it
and speak first."

"But he won't. And she won't. You never saw two such determined mortals.
They get it from their grandfather on the mother's side--
old Absalom Gordon. There is no such stubbornness on the Penhallow side.
His obstinacy was a proverb, my dear--actually a proverb.
What ever he said, he would stick to if the skies fell.
He was a terrible old man to swear, too," added Mrs. Frederick,
dropping into irrelevant reminiscence. "He spent a long while
in a mining camp in his younger days and he never got over it--
the habit of swearing, I mean. It would have made your blood run cold,
my dear, to have heard him go on at times. And yet he was a real
good old man every other way. He couldn't help it someway.
He tried to, but he used to say that profanity came as natural
to him as breathing. It used to mortify his family terribly.
Fortunately, none of them took after him in that respect.
But he's dead--and one shouldn't speak ill of the dead.
I must go and get Mattie Penhallow to do my hair. I would burst
these sleeves clean out if I tried to do it myself and I don't
want to dress over again. You won't be likely to talk to Romney
about Lucinda again, my dear Cecilia?"

"Fifteen years!" murmured Mrs. George helplessly to the dahlias.
"Engaged for fifteen years and never speaking to each other!
Dear heart and soul, think of it! Oh, these Penhallows!"

Meanwhile, Lucinda, serenely unconscious that her love story
was being mouthed over by Mrs. Frederick in the dahlia garden,
was dressing for the wedding. Lucinda still enjoyed dressing
for a festivity, since the mirror still dealt gently with her.
Moreover, she had a new dress. Now, a new dress--and especially
one as nice as this--was a rarity with Lucinda, who belonged
to a branch of the Penhallows noted for being chronically hard up.
Indeed, Lucinda and her widowed mother were positively poor,
and hence a new dress was an event in Lucinda's existence.
An uncle had given her this one--a beautiful, perishable thing,
such as Lucinda would never have dared to choose for herself,
but in which she revelled with feminine delight.

It was of pale green voile--a colour which brought out admirably
the ruddy gloss of her hair and the clear brilliance of her skin.
When she had finished dressing she looked at herself in the mirror
with frank delight. Lucinda was not vain, but she was quite well aware
of the fact of her beauty and took an impersonal pleasure in it,
as if she were looking at some finely painted picture by a master hand.

The form and face reflected in the glass satisfied her.
The puffs and draperies of the green voile displayed to perfection
the full, but not over-full, curves of her fine figure.
Lucinda lifted her arm and touched a red rose to her lips with
the hand upon which shone the frosty glitter of Romney's diamond,
looking at the graceful slope of her shoulder and the splendid
line of chin and throat with critical approval.

She noted, too, how well the gown became her eyes, bringing out
all the deeper colour in them. Lucinda had magnificent eyes.
Once Romney had written a sonnet to them in which he compared their
colour to ripe blueberries. This may not sound poetical to you unless
you know or remember just what the tints of ripe blueberries are--
dusky purple in some lights, clear slate in others, and yet again
in others the misty hue of early meadow violets.

"You really look very well," remarked the real Lucinda to the
mirrored Lucinda. "Nobody would think you were an old maid.
But you are. Alice Penhallow, who is to be married to-night, was
a child of five when you thought of being married fifteen years ago.
That makes you an old maid, my dear. Well, it is your own fault,
and it will continue to be your own fault, you stubborn offshoot
of a stubborn breed!"

She flung her train out straight and pulled on her gloves.

"I do hope I won't get any spots on this dress to-night," she reflected.
"It will have to do me for a gala dress for a year at least--
and I have a creepy conviction that it is fearfully spottable.
Bless Uncle Mark's good, uncalculating heart! How I would have
detested it if he had given me something sensible and useful and ugly--
as Aunt Emilia would have done."

They all went to "young" John Penhallow's at early moonrise.
Lucinda drove over the two miles of hill and dale with a youthful
second cousin, by name, Carey Penhallow. The wedding was quite
a brilliant affair. Lucinda seemed to pervade the social atmosphere,
and everywhere she went a little ripple of admiration trailed
after her like a wave. She was undeniably a belle, yet she found
herself feeling faintly bored and was rather glad than otherwise
when the guests began to fray off.

"I'm afraid I'm losing my capacity for enjoyment,"
she thought, a little drearily. "Yes, I must be growing old.
That is what it means when social functions begin to bore you."

It was that unlucky Mrs. George who blundered again.
She was standing on the veranda when Carey Penhallow dashed up.

"Tell Lucinda that I can't take her back to the Grange. I have
to drive Mark and Cissy Penhallow to Bright River to catch
the two o'clock express. There will be plenty of chances
for her with the others."

At this moment George Penhallow, holding his rearing horse
with difficulty, shouted for his wife. Mrs. George,
all in a flurry, dashed back into the still crowded hall.
Exactly to whom she gave her message was never known
to any of the Penhallows. But a tall, ruddy-haired girl,
dressed in pale green organdy--Anne Shirley from Avonlea--
told Marilla Cuthbert and Rachel Lynde as a joke the next
morning how a chubby little woman in a bright pink fascinator
had clutched her by the arm, and gasped out: "Carey Penhallow
can't take you--he says you're to look out for someone else,"
and was gone before she could answer or turn around.

Thus it was that Lucinda, when she came out to the
veranda step, found herself unaccountably deserted.
All the Grange Penhallows were gone; Lucinda realized this
after a few moments of bewildered seeking, and she understood
that if she were to get to the Grange that night she must walk.
Plainly there was nobody to take her.

Lucinda was angry. It is not pleasant to find yourself forgotten
and neglected. It is still less pleasant to walk home alone
along a country road, at one o'clock in the morning, wearing a
pale green voile. Lucinda was not prepared for such a walk.
She had nothing on her feet save thin-soled shoes, and her only
wraps were a flimsy fascinator and a short coat.

"What a guy I shall look, stalking home alone in this rig,"
she thought crossly.

There was no help for it, unless she confessed her plight
to some of the stranger guests and begged a drive home.
Lucinda's pride scorned such a request and the admission
of neglect it involved. No, she would walk, since that was
all there was to it; but she would not go by the main road
to be stared at by all and sundry who might pass her.
There was a short cut by way of a lane across the fields;
she knew every inch of it, although she had not traversed
it for years.

She gathered up the green voile as trimly as possible, slipped around
the house in the kindly shadows, picked her way across the side lawn,
and found a gate which opened into a birch-bordered lane where the
frosted trees shone with silvery-golden radiance in the moonlight.
Lucinda flitted down the lane, growing angrier at every step as
the realization of how shamefully she seemed to have been treated came
home to her. She believed that nobody had thought about her at all,
which was tenfold worse than premeditated neglect.

As she came to the gate at the lower end of the lane a man who was leaning
over it started, with a quick intake of his breath, which, in any other
man than Romney Penhallow, or for any other woman than Lucinda Penhallow,
would have been an exclamation of surprise.

Lucinda recognized him with a great deal of annoyance and
a little relief. She would not have to walk home alone.
But with Romney Penhallow! Would he think she had contrived
it so purposely?

Romney silently opened the gate for her, silently latched it behind her,
and silently fell into step beside her. Down across a velvety
sweep of field they went; the air was frosty, calm and still;
over the world lay a haze of moonshine and mist that converted
East Grafton's prosaic hills and fields into a shimmering fairyland.
At first Lucinda felt angrier than ever. What a ridiculous situation!
How the Penhallows would laugh over it!

As for Romney, he, too, was angry with the trick impish chance had
played him. He liked being the butt of an awkward situation as little
as most men; and certainly to be obliged to walk home over moonlit fields
at one o'clock in the morning with the woman he had loved and never
spoken to for fifteen years was the irony of fate with a vengeance.
Would she think he had schemed for it? And how the deuce did she come
to be walking home from the wedding at all?

By the time they had crossed the field and reached the wild cherry lane
beyond it, Lucinda's anger was mastered by her saving sense of humour.
She was even smiling a little maliciously under her fascinator.

The lane was a place of enchantment--a long, moonlit colonnade
adown which beguiling wood nymphs might have footed it featly.
The moonshine fell through the arching boughs and made a mosaic of silver
light and clear-cut shadow for the unfriendly lovers to walk in.
On either side was the hovering gloom of the woods, and around them
was a great silence unstirred by wind or murmur.

Midway in the lane Lucinda was attacked by a sentimental recollection.
She thought of the last time Romney and she had walked home
together through this very lane, from a party at "young" John's. It
had been moonlight then too, and--Lucinda checked a sigh--
they had walked hand in hand. Just here, by the big gray beech,
he had stopped her and kissed her. Lucinda wondered if he were
thinking of it, too, and stole a look at him from under the lace
border of her fascinator.

But he was striding moodily along with his hands in his pockets,
and his hat pulled down over his eyes, passing the old beech
without a glance at it. Lucinda checked another sigh,
gathered up an escaped flutter of voile, and marched on.

Past the lane a range of three silvery harvest fields sloped down
to Peter Penhallow's brook--a wide, shallow stream bridged over
in the olden days by the mossy trunk of an ancient fallen tree.
When Lucinda and Romney arrived at the brook they gazed at the brawling
water blankly. Lucinda remembered that she must not speak to Romney
just in time to prevent an exclamation of dismay. There was no tree!
There was no bridge of any kind over the brook!

Here was a predicament! But before Lucinda could do more than
despairingly ask herself what was to be done now, Romney answered--
not in words, but in deeds. He coolly picked Lucinda up in his arms,
as if she had been a child instead of a full grown woman of no
mean avoirdupois, and began to wade with her through the water.

Lucinda gasped helplessly. She could not forbid him and she
was so choked with rage over his presumption that she could
not have spoken in any case. Then came the catastrophe.
Romney's foot slipped on a treacherous round stone--
there was a tremendous splash--and Romney and Lucinda Penhallow
were sitting down in the middle of Peter Penhallow's brook.

Lucinda was the first to regain her feet. About her clung
in heart-breaking limpness the ruined voile. The remembrance
of all her wrongs that night rushed over her soul, and her eyes
blazed in the moonlight. Lucinda Penhallow had never been
so angry in her life.

"YOU D--D IDIOT!" she said, in a voice that literally shook with rage.

Romney meekly scrambled up the bank after her.

"I'm awfully sorry, Lucinda," he said, striving with uncertain
success to keep a suspicious quiver of laughter out of his tone.
"It was wretchedly clumsy of me, but that pebble turned right under
my foot. Please forgive me--for that--and for other things."

Lucinda deigned no answer. She stood on a flat stone and wrung the water
from the poor green voile. Romney surveyed her apprehensively.

"Hurry, Lucinda," he entreated. "You will catch your death of cold."

"I never take cold," answered Lucinda, with chattering teeth.
"And it is my dress I am thinking of--was thinking of.
You have more need to hurry. You are sopping wet yourself
and you know you are subject to colds. There--come."

Lucinda picked up the stringy train, which had been so brave and buoyant
five minutes before, and started up the field at a brisk rate.
Romney came up to her and slipped his arm through hers in the old way.
For a time they walked along in silence. Then Lucinda began to shake with
inward laughter. She laughed silently for the whole length of the field;
and at the line fence between Peter Penhallow's land and the Grange
acres she paused, threw back the fascinator from her face, and looked
at Romney defiantly.

"You are thinking of--THAT," she cried, "and I am thinking of it.
And we will go on, thinking of it at intervals for the rest
of our lives. But if you ever mention it to me I'll never
forgive you, Romney Penhallow!"

"I never will," Romney promised. There was more than a suspicion of
laughter in his voice this time, but Lucinda did not choose to resent it.
She did not speak again until they reached the Grange gate.
Then she faced him solemnly.

"It was a case of atavism," she said. "Old Grandfather Gordon
was to blame for it."

At the Grange almost everybody was in bed. What with the guests
straggling home at intervals and hurrying sleepily off to their rooms,
nobody had missed Lucinda, each set supposing she was with some
other set. Mrs. Frederick, Mrs. Nathaniel and Mrs. George alone
were up. The perennially chilly Mrs. Nathaniel had kindled a fire
of chips in the blue room grate to warm her feet before retiring,
and the three women were discussing the wedding in subdued tones
when the door opened and the stately form of Lucinda, stately even
in the dragged voile, appeared, with the damp Romney behind her.

"Lucinda Penhallow!" gasped they, one and all.

"I was left to walk home," said Lucinda coolly. "So Romney and I
came across the fields. There was no bridge over the brook,
and when he was carrying me over he slipped and we fell in.
That is all. No, Cecilia, I never take cold, so don't worry.
Yes, my dress is ruined, but that is of no consequence.
No, thank you, Cecilia, I do not care for a hot drink.
Romney, do go and take off those wet clothes of yours immediately.
No, Cecilia, I will NOT take a hot footbath. I am going straight
to bed. Good night."

When the door closed on the pair the three sisters-in-law stared at
each other. Mrs. Frederick, feeling herself incapable of expressing
her sensations originally, took refuge in a quotation:


"'Do I sleep, do I dream, do I wonder and doubt?
Is things what they seem, or is visions about?'"


"There will be another Penhallow wedding soon," said Mrs. Nathaniel,
with a long breath. "Lucinda has spoken to Romney AT LAST."

"Oh, WHAT do you suppose she said to him?" cried Mrs. George.

"My dear Cecilia," said Mrs. Frederick, "we shall never know."

They never did know.





VI. Old Man Shaw's Girl


"Day after to-morrow--day after to-morrow," said Old Man Shaw,
rubbing his long slender hands together gleefully.
"I have to keep saying it over and over, so as to really believe it.
It seems far too good to be true that I'm to have Blossom again.
And everything is ready. Yes, I think everything is ready,
except a bit of cooking. And won't this orchard be a surprise to her!
I'm just going to bring her out here as soon as I can,
never saying a word. I'll fetch her through the spruce lane,
and when we come to the end of the path I'll step back casual-like,
and let her go out from under the trees alone, never suspecting.
It'll be worth ten times the trouble to see her big, brown eyes
open wide and hear her say, 'Oh, daddy! Why, daddy!'"

He rubbed his hands again and laughed softly to himself.
He was a tall, bent old man, whose hair was snow white, but whose face
was fresh and rosy. His eyes were a boy's eyes, large, blue and merry,
and his mouth had never got over a youthful trick of smiling at
any provocation--and, oft-times, at no provocation at all.

To be sure, White Sands people would not have given you the most
favourable opinion in the world of Old Man Shaw. First and foremost,
they would have told you that he was "shiftless," and had let
his bit of a farm run out while he pottered with flowers and bugs,
or rambled aimlessly about in the woods, or read books along
the shore. Perhaps it was true; but the old farm yielded him
a living, and further than that Old Man Shaw had no ambition.
He was as blithe as a pilgrim on a pathway climbing to the west.
He had learned the rare secret that you must take happiness when you
find it--that there is no use in marking the place and coming back
to it at a more convenient season, because it will not be there then.
And it is very easy to be happy if you know, as Old Man Shaw
most thoroughly knew, how to find pleasure in little things.
He enjoyed life, he had always enjoyed life and helped others to enjoy it;
consequently his life was a success, whatever White Sands people
might think of it. What if he had not "improved" his farm?
There are some people to whom life will never be anything more
than a kitchen garden; and there are others to whom it will always
be a royal palace with domes and minarets of rainbow fancy.

The orchard of which he was so proud was as yet little more than
the substance of things hoped for--a flourishing plantation
of young trees which would amount to something later on.
Old Man Shaw's house was on the crest of a bare, sunny hill,
with a few staunch old firs and spruces behind it--the only trees
that could resist the full sweep of the winds that blew bitterly
up from the sea at times. Fruit trees would never grow near it,
and this had been a great grief to Sara.

"Oh, daddy, if we could just have an orchard!" she had been wont
to say wistfully, when other farmhouses in White Sands were
smothered whitely in apple bloom. And when she had gone away,
and her father had nothing to look forward to save her return,
he was determined she should find an orchard when she came back.

Over the southward hill, warmly sheltered by spruce woods and
sloping to the sunshine, was a little field, so fertile that all
the slack management of a life-time had not availed to exhaust it.
Here Old Man Shaw set out his orchard and saw it flourish,
watching and tending it until he came to know each tree as a child
and loved it. His neighbours laughed at him, and said that the fruit
of an orchard so far away from the house would all be stolen.
But as yet there was no fruit, and when the time came for bearing
there would be enough and to spare.

"Blossom and me'll get all we want, and the boys can have the rest,
if they want 'em worse'n they want a good conscience,"
said that unworldly, unbusinesslike Old Man Shaw.

On his way back home from his darling orchard he found a rare
fern in the woods and dug it up for Sara--she had loved ferns.
He planted it at the shady, sheltered side of the house and then sat
down on the old bench by the garden gate to read her last letter--
the letter that was only a note, because she was coming home soon.
He knew every word of it by heart, but that did not spoil the pleasure
of re-reading it every half-hour.

Old Man Shaw had not married until late in life, and had,
so White Sands people said, selected a wife with his usual judgment--
which, being interpreted, meant no judgment at all; otherwise, he would
never have married Sara Glover, a mere slip of a girl, with big
brown eyes like a frightened wood creature's, and the delicate,
fleeting bloom of a spring Mayflower.

"The last woman in the world for a farmer's wife--no strength
or get-up about her."

Neither could White Sands folk understand what on earth Sara Glover
had married him for.

"Well, the fool crop was the only one that never failed."

Old Man Shaw--he was Old Man Shaw even then, although he was only forty--
and his girl bride had troubled themselves not at all about
White Sands opinions. They had one year of perfect happiness,
which is always worth living for, even if the rest of life be a
dreary pilgrimage, and then Old Man Shaw found himself alone again,
except for little Blossom. She was christened Sara, after her
dead mother, but she was always Blossom to her father--the precious
little blossom whose plucking had cost the mother her life.

Sara Glover's people, especially a wealthy aunt in Montreal,
had wanted to take the child, but Old Man Shaw grew almost
fierce over the suggestion. He would give his baby to no one.
A woman was hired to look after the house, but it was the father
who cared for the baby in the main. He was as tender and faithful
and deft as a woman. Sara never missed a mother's care,
and she grew up into a creature of life and light and beauty,
a constant delight to all who knew her. She had a way
of embroidering life with stars. She was dowered with all
the charming characteristics of both parents, with a resilient
vitality and activity which had pertained to neither of them.
When she was ten years old she had packed all hirelings off,
and kept house for her father for six delightful years--
years in which they were father and daughter, brother and sister,
and "chums." Sara never went to school, but her father saw to her
education after a fashion of his own. When their work was done
they lived in the woods and fields, in the little garden they
had made on the sheltered side of the house, or on the shore,
where sunshine and storm were to them equally lovely and beloved.
Never was comradeship more perfect or more wholly satisfactory.

"Just wrapped up in each other," said White Sands folk,
half-enviously, half-disapprovingly.


 


Back to Full Books