Chronicles of Avonlea
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Part 4 out of 4
Pa explained. Ma listened in grim silence until he had finished.
Then she said sternly:
"Do you reckon we're going to keep this baby?"
"I--I-- dunno," said Pa. And he didn't.
"Well, we're NOT. I brought up one boy and that's enough.
I don't calculate to be pestered with any more. I never was much
struck on children _as_ children, anyhow. You say that Mary Garland
had a brother out in Mantioba? Well, we shall just write to him
and tell him he's got to look out for his nephew."
"But how can you do that, Ma, when nobody knows his address?"
objected Pa, with a wistful look at that delicious, laughing baby.
"I'll find out his address if I have to advertise in the papers for him,"
retorted Ma. "As for you, Pa Sloane, you're not fit to be out of a
lunatic asylum. The next auction you'll be buying a wife, I s'pose?"
Pa, quite crushed by Ma's sarcasm, pulled his chair in to supper.
Ma picked up the baby and sat down at the head of the table.
Little Teddy laughed and pinched her face--Ma's face!
Ma looked very grim, but she fed him his supper as skilfully as
if it had not been thirty years since she had done such a thing.
But then, the woman who once learns the mother knack never forgets it.
After tea Ma despatched Pa over to William Alexander's to borrow
a high chair. When Pa returned in the twilight, the baby was fenced
in on the sofa again, and Ma was stepping briskly about the garret.
She was bringing down the little cot bed her own boy had once occupied,
and setting it up in their room for Teddy. Then she undressed
the baby and rocked him to sleep, crooning an old lullaby over him.
Pa Sloane sat quietly and listened, with very sweet memories
of the long ago, when he and Ma had been young and proud,
and the bewhiskered William Alexander had been a curly-headed little
fellow like this one.
Ma was not driven to advertising for Mrs. Garland's brother.
That personage saw the notice of his sister's death in a home
paper and wrote to the Carmody postmaster for full information.
The letter was referred to Ma and Ma answered it.
She wrote that they had taken in the baby, pending further
arrangements, but had no intention of keeping it; and she
calmly demanded of its uncle what was to be done with it.
Then she sealed and addressed the letter with an unfaltering hand;
but, when it was done, she looked across the table at Pa Sloane,
who was sitting in the armchair with the baby on his knee.
They were having a royal good time together. Pa had always been
dreadfully foolish about babies. He looked ten years younger.
Ma's keen eyes softened a little as she watched them.
A prompt answer came to her letter. Teddy's uncle wrote that he had
six children of his own, but was nevertheless willing and glad
to give his little nephew a home. But he could not come after him.
Josiah Spencer, of White Sands, was going out to Manitoba in the spring.
If Mr. and Mrs. Sloane could only keep the baby till then he could be
sent out with the Spencers. Perhaps they would see a chance sooner.
"There'll be no chance sooner," said Pa Sloane in a tone of satisfaction.
"No, worse luck!" retorted Ma crisply.
The winter passed by. Little Teddy grew and throve, and Pa Sloane
worshipped him. Ma was very good to him, too, and Teddy was just
as fond of her as of Pa.
Nevertheless, as the spring drew near, Pa became depressed.
Sometimes he sighed heavily, especially when he heard casual
references to the Josiah Spencer emigration.
One warm afternoon in early May Josiah Spencer arrived.
He found Ma knitting placidly in the kitchen, while Pa nodded
over his newspaper and the baby played with the cat on the floor.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Sloane," said Josiah with a flourish.
"I just dropped in to see about this young man here.
We are going to leave next Wednesday; so you'd better send him
down to our place Monday or Tuesday, so that he can get used
to us, and--"
"Oh, Ma," began Pa, rising imploringly to his feet.
Ma transfixed him with her eye.
"Sit down, Pa," she commanded.
Unhappy Pa sat.
Then Ma glared at the smiling Josiah, who instantly felt as guilty
as if he had been caught stealing sheep red-handed.
"We are much obliged to you, Mr. Spencer," said Ma icily,
"but this baby is OURS. We bought him, and we paid for him.
A bargain is a bargain. When I pay cash down for babies,
I propose to get my money's worth. We are going to keep this
baby in spite of any number of uncles in Manitoba. Have I made
this sufficiently clear to your understanding, Mr. Spencer?"
"Certainly, certainly," stammered the unfortunate man,
feeling guiltier than ever, "but I thought you didn't want him--
I thought you'd written to his uncle--I thought--"
"I really wouldn't think quite so much if I were you," said Ma kindly.
"It must be hard on you. Won't you stay and have tea with us?"
But, no, Josiah would not stay. He was thankful to make his escape
with such rags of self-respect as remained to him.
Pa Sloane arose and came around to Ma's chair. He laid a trembling
hand on her shoulder.
"Ma, you're a good woman," he said softly.
"Go 'long, Pa," said Ma.
X. The Courting of Prissy Strong
I WASN'T able to go to prayer meeting that evening because I
had neuralgia in my face; but Thomas went, and the minute he came
home I knew by the twinkle in his eye that he had some news.
"Who do you s'pose Stephen Clark went home with from meeting to-night?"
he said, chuckling.
"Jane Miranda Blair," I said promptly. Stephen Clark's wife had
been dead for two years and he hadn't taken much notice of anybody,
so far as was known. But Carmody had Jane Miranda all ready
for him, and really I don't know why she didn't suit him,
except for the reason that a man never does what he is expected
to do when it comes to marrying.
Thomas chuckled again.
"Wrong. He stepped up to Prissy Strong and walked off with her.
Cold soup warmed over."
"Prissy Strong!" I just held up my hands. Then I laughed.
"He needn't try for Prissy," I said. "Emmeline nipped that in
the bud twenty years ago, and she'll do it again."
"Em'line is an old crank," growled Thomas. He detested Emmeline Strong,
and always did.
"She's that, all right," I agreed, "and that is just the reason
she can turn poor Prissy any way she likes. You mark my words,
she'll put her foot right down on this as soon as she finds it out."
Thomas said that I was probably right. I lay awake for a long time
after I went to bed that night, thinking of Prissy and Stephen. As a
general rule, I don't concern my head about other people's affairs,
but Prissy was such a helpless creature I couldn't get her off my mind.
Twenty years ago Stephen Clark had tried to go with
Prissy Strong. That was pretty soon after Prissy's father
had died. She and Emmeline were living alone together.
Emmeline was thirty, ten years older than Prissy, and if ever there
were two sisters totally different from each other in every way,
those two were Emmeline and Prissy Strong.
Emmeline took after her father; she was big and dark and homely, and she
was the most domineering creature that ever stepped on shoe leather.
She simply ruled poor Prissy with a rod of iron.
Prissy herself was a pretty girl--at least most people thought so.
I can't honestly say I ever admired her style much myself.
I like something with more vim and snap to it. Prissy was slim
and pink, with soft, appealing blue eyes, and pale gold hair
all clinging in baby rings around her face. She was just as meek
and timid as she looked and there wasn't a bit of harm in her.
I always liked Prissy, even if I didn't admire her looks as much
as some people did.
Anyway, it was plain her style suited Stephen Clark. He began
to drive her, and there wasn't a speck of doubt that Prissy
liked him. Then Emmeline just put a stopper on the affair.
It was pure cantankerousness in her. Stephen was
a good match and nothing could be said against him.
But Emmeline was just determined that Prissy shouldn't marry.
She couldn't get married herself, and she was sore enough about it.
Of course, if Prissy had had a spark of spirit she wouldn't
have given in. But she hadn't a mite; I believe she would
have cut off her nose if Emmeline had ordered her to do it.
She was just her mother over again. If ever a girl belied her name,
Prissy Strong did. There wasn't anything strong about her.
One night, when prayer meeting came out, Stephen stepped
up to Prissy as usual and asked if he might see her home.
Thomas and I were just behind--we weren't married ourselves then--
and we heard it all. Prissy gave one scared, appealing look
at Emmeline and then said, "No, thank you, not to-night."
Stephen just turned on his heel and went. He was a high-spirited
fellow and I knew he would never overlook a public slight like that.
If he had had as much sense as he ought to have had he would have known
that Emmeline was at the bottom of it; but he didn't, and he began
going to see Althea Gillis, and they were married the next year.
Althea was a rather nice girl, though giddy, and I think she and Stephen
were happy enough together. In real life things are often like that.
Nobody ever tried to go with Prissy again. I suppose they
were afraid of Emmeline. Prissy's beauty soon faded.
She was always kind of sweet looking, but her bloom went, and she got
shyer and limper every year of her life. She wouldn't have dared
put on her second best dress without asking Emmeline's permission.
She was real fond of cats and Emmeline wouldn't let her keep one.
Emmeline even cut the serial out of the religious weekly she took
before she would give it to Prissy, because she didn't believe
in reading novels. It used to make me furious to see it all.
They were my next door neighbours after I married Thomas, and I
was often in and out. Sometimes I'd feel real vexed at Prissy
for giving in the way she did; but, after all, she couldn't help it--
she was born that way.
And now Stephen was going to try his luck again.
It certainly did seem funny.
Stephen walked home with Prissy from prayer meeting four nights
before Emmeline found it out. Emmeline hadn't been going to prayer
meeting all that summer because she was mad at Mr. Leonard. She had
expressed her disapproval to him because he had buried old Naomi Clark
at the harbour "just as if she was a Christian," and Mr. Leonard
had said something to her she couldn't get over for a while.
I don't know what it was, but I know that when Mr. Leonard WAS roused
to rebuke anyone the person so rebuked remembered it for a spell.
All at once I knew she must have discovered about Stephen and Prissy,
for Prissy stopped going to prayer meeting.
I felt real worried about it, someway, and although Thomas said
for goodness' sake not to go poking my fingers into other people's pies,
I felt as if I ought to do something. Stephen Clark was a good man
and Prissy would have a beautiful home; and those two little boys
of Althea's needed a mother if ever boys did. Besides, I knew quite
well that Prissy, in her secret soul, was hankering to be married.
So was Emmeline, too--but nobody wanted to help HER to a husband.
The upshot of my meditations was that I asked Stephen down
to dinner with us from church one day. I had heard a rumour
that he was going to see Lizzie Pye over at Avonlea, and I
knew it was time to be stirring, if anything were to be done.
If it had been Jane Miranda I don't know that I'd have bothered;
but Lizzie Pye wouldn't have done for a stepmother for
Althea's boys at all. She was too bad-tempered, and as mean
as second skimmings besides.
Stephen came. He seemed dull and moody, and not much inclined to talk.
After dinner I gave Thomas a hint. I said,
"You go to bed and have your nap. I want to talk to Stephen."
Thomas shrugged his shoulders and went. He probably thought I was
brewing up lots of trouble for myself, but he didn't say anything.
As soon as he was out of the way I casually remarked to Stephen
that I understood that he was going to take one of my neighbours
away and that I couldn't be sorry, though she was an excellent
neighbour and I would miss her a great deal.
"You won't have to miss her much, I reckon," said Stephen grimly.
"I've been told I'm not wanted there."
I was surprised to hear Stephen come out so plump and plain about it,
for I hadn't expected to get at the root of the matter so easily.
Stephen wasn't the confidential kind. But it really seemed to be
a relief to him to talk about it; I never saw a man feeling so sore
about anything. He told me the whole story.
Prissy had written him a letter--he fished it out of his pocket and gave
it to me to read. It was in Prissy's prim, pretty little writing,
sure enough, and it just said that his attentions were "unwelcome,"
and would he be "kind enough to refrain from offering them."
Not much wonder the poor man went to see Lizzie Pye!
"Stephen, I'm surprised at you for thinking that Prissy Strong
wrote that letter," I said.
"It's in her handwriting," he said stubbornly.
"Of course it is. 'The hand is the hand of Esau,
but the voice is the voice of Jacob,'" I said, though I
wasn't sure whether the quotation was exactly appropriate.
"Emmeline composed that letter and made Prissy copy it out.
I know that as well as if I'd seen her do it, and you ought
to have known it, too."
"If I thought that I'd show Emmeline I could get Prissy in spite of her,"
said Stephen savagely. "But if Prissy doesn't want me I'm not going
to force my attentions on her."
Well, we talked it over a bit, and in the end I agreed to
sound Prissy, and find out what she really thought about it.
I didn't think it would be hard to do; and it wasn't. I went over
the very next day because I saw Emmeline driving off to the store.
I found Prissy alone, sewing carpet rags. Emmeline kept
her constantly at that--because Prissy hated it I suppose.
Prissy was crying when I went in, and in a few minutes I had
the whole story.
Prissy wanted to get married--and she wanted to get married to Stephen--
and Emmeline wouldn't let her.
"Prissy Strong," I said in exasperation, "you haven't the spirit
of a mouse! Why on earth did you write him such a letter?"
"Why, Emmeline made me," said Prissy, as if there couldn't
be any appeal from that; and I knew there couldn't--
for Prissy. I also knew that if Stephen wanted to see Prissy
again Emmeline must know nothing of it, and I told him so when
he came down the next evening--to borrow a hoe, he said.
It was a long way to come for a hoe.
"Then what am I to do?" he said. "It wouldn't be any use
to write, for it would likely fall into Emmeline's hands.
She won't let Prissy go anywhere alone after this, and how am
I to know when the old cat is away?"
"Please don't insult cats," I said. "I'll tell you what we'll do.
You can see the ventilator on our barn from your place, can't you?
You'd be able to make out a flag or something tied to it, wouldn't you,
through that spy-glass of yours?"
Stephen thought he could.
"Well, you take a squint at it every now and then," I said.
"Just as soon as Emmeline leaves Prissy alone I'll hoist the signal."
The chance didn't come for a whole fortnight. Then, one evening,
I saw Emmeline striding over the field below our house.
As soon as she was out of sight I ran through the birch
grove to Prissy.
"Yes, Em'line's gone to sit up with Jane Lawson to-night,"
said Prissy, all fluttered and trembling.
"Then you put on your muslin dress and fix your hair," I said.
"I'm going home to get Thomas to tie something to that ventilator."
But do you think Thomas would do it? Not he. He said he owed
something to his position as elder in the church. In the end
I had to do it myself, though I don't like climbing ladders.
I tied Thomas' long red woollen scarf to the ventilator,
and prayed that Stephen would see it. He did, for in less than
an hour he drove down our lane and put his horse in our barn.
He was all spruced up, and as nervous and excited as a schoolboy.
He went right over to Prissy, and I began to tuft my new comfort
with a clear conscience. I shall never know why it suddenly came
into my head to go up to the garret and make sure that the moths
hadn't got into my box of blankets; but I always believed that it
was a special interposition of Providence. I went up and happened
to look out of the east window; and there I saw Emmeline Strong
coming home across our pond field.
I just flew down those garret stairs and out through the birches.
I burst into the Strong kitchen, where Stephen and Prissy were sitting
as cozy as you please.
"Stephen, come quick! Emmeline's nearly here," I cried.
Prissy looked out of the window and wrung her hands.
"Oh, she's in the lane now," she gasped. "He can't get out of the house
without her seeing him. Oh, Rosanna, what shall we do?
I really don't know what would have become of those two people if I
hadn't been in existence to find ideas for them.
"Take Stephen up to the garret and hide him there, Prissy," I said firmly,
"and take him quick."
Prissy took him quick, but she had barely time to get back to the kitchen
before Emmeline marched in--mad as a wet hen because somebody had been
ahead of her offering to sit up with Jane Lawson, and so she lost
the chance of poking and prying into things while Jane was asleep.
The minute she clapped eyes on Prissy she suspected something.
It wasn't any wonder, for there was Prissy, all dressed up, with flushed
cheeks and shining eyes. She was all in a quiver of excitement,
and looked ten years younger.
"Priscilla Strong, you've been expecting Stephen Clark
here this evening!" burst out Emmeline. "You wicked,
deceitful, underhanded, ungrateful creature!"
And she went on storming at Prissy, who began to cry, and looked so weak
and babyish that I was frightened she would betray the whole thing.
"This is between you and Prissy, Emmeline," I struck in,
"and I'm not going to interfere. But I want to get you to come
over and show me how to tuft my comfort that new pattern you
learned in Avonlea, and as it had better be done before dark
I wish you'd come right away."
"I s'pose I'll go," said Emmeline ungraciously, "but Priscilla
shall come, too, for I see that she isn't to be trusted out
of my sight after this."
I hoped Stephen would see us from the garret window and make good
his escape. But I didn't dare trust to chance, so when I got Emmeline
safely to work on my comfort I excused myself and slipped out.
Luckily my kitchen was on the off side of the house, but I
was a nervous woman as I rushed across to the Strong place
and dashed up Emmeline's garret stairs to Stephen. It was
fortunate I had come, for he didn't know we had gone.
Prissy had hidden him behind the loom and he didn't dare
move for fear Emmeline would hear him on that creaky floor.
He was a sight with cobwebs.
I got him down and smuggled him into our barn, and he stayed
there until it was dark and the Strong girls had gone home.
Emmeline began to rage at Prissy the moment they were
outside my door.
Then Stephen came in and we talked things over. He and Prissy
had made good use of their time, short as it had been.
Prissy had promised to marry him, and all that remained was
to get the ceremony performed.
"And that will be no easy matter," I warned him. "Now that
Emmeline's suspicions are aroused she'll never let Prissy out of
her sight until you're married to another woman, if it's years.
I know Emmeline Strong. And I know Prissy. If it was any other girl
in the world she'd run away, or manage it somehow, but Prissy never will.
She's too much in the habit of obeying Emmeline. You'll have
an obedient wife, Stephen--if you ever get her."
Stephen looked as if he thought that wouldn't be any drawback.
Gossip said that Althea had been pretty bossy. I don't know.
Maybe it was so.
"Can't you suggest something, Rosanna?" he implored.
"You've helped us so far, and I'll never forget it."
"The only thing I can think of is for you to have the license ready,
and speak to Mr. Leonard, and keep an eye on our ventilator," I said.
"I'll watch here and signal whenever there's an opening."
Well, I watched and Stephen watched, and Mr. Leonard was
in the plot, too. Prissy was always a favourite of his,
and he would have been more than human, saint as he is,
if he'd had any love for Emmeline, after the way she was always
trying to brew up strife in the church.
But Emmeline was a match for us all. She never let Prissy
out of her sight. Everywhere she went she toted Prissy, too.
When a month had gone by, I was almost in despair.
Mr. Leonard had to leave for the Assembly in another week
and Stephen's neighbours were beginning to talk about him.
They said that a man who spent all his time hanging around
the yard with a spyglass, and trusting everything to a hired boy,
couldn't be altogether right in his mind.
I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Emmeline driving away
one day alone. As soon as she was out of sight I whisked over,
and Anne Shirley and Diana Barry went with me.
They were visiting me that afternoon. Diana's mother was my
second cousin, and, as we visited back and forth frequently, I'd often
seen Diana. But I'd never seen her chum, Anne Shirley, although I'd
heard enough about her to drive anyone frantic with curiosity.
So when she came home from Redmond College that summer I asked
Diana to take pity on me and bring her over some afternoon.
I wasn't disappointed in her. I considered her a beauty,
though some people couldn't see it. She had the most magnificent red
hair and the biggest, shiningest eyes I ever saw in a girl's head.
As for her laugh, it made me feel young again to hear it.
She and Diana both laughed enough that afternoon, for I told them,
under solemn promise of secrecy, all about poor Prissy's love affair.
So nothing would do them but they must go over with me.
The appearance of the house amazed me. All the shutters were closed
and the door locked. I knocked and knocked, but there was no answer.
Then I walked around the house to the only window that hadn't shutters--
a tiny one upstairs. I knew it was the window in the closet off the room
where the girls slept. I stopped under it and called Prissy. Before long
Prissy came and opened it. She was so pale and woe-begone looking
that I pitied her with all my heart.
"Prissy, where has Emmeline gone?" I asked.
"Down to Avonlea to see the Roger Pyes. They're sick with measles,
and Emmeline couldn't take me because I've never had measles."
Poor Prissy! She had never had anything a body ought to have.
"Then you just come and unfasten a shutter, and come right over to
my house," I said exultantly. "We'll have Stephen and the minister
here in no time."
"I can't--Em'line has locked me in here," said Prissy woefully.
I was posed. No living mortal bigger than a baby could have got
in or out of that closet window.
"Well," I said finally, "I'll put the signal up for Stephen anyhow,
and we'll see what can be done when he gets here."
I didn't know how I was ever to get the signal up on that ventilator,
for it was one of the days I take dizzy spells; and if I took one up
on the ladder there'd probably be a funeral instead of a wedding.
But Anne Shirley said she'd put it up for me, and she did.
I had never seen that girl before, and I've never seen her since,
but it's my opinion that there wasn't much she couldn't do if she
made up her mind to do it.
Stephen wasn't long in getting there and he brought the minister
with him. Then we all, including Thomas--who was beginning to get
interested in the affair in spite of himself--went over and held
council of war beneath the closet window.
Thomas suggested breaking in doors and carrying Prissy off boldly,
but I could see that Mr. Leonard looked very dubious over that,
and even Stephen said he thought it could only be done as a
last resort. I agreed with him. I knew Emmeline Strong would
bring an action against him for housebreaking as likely as not.
She'd be so furious she'd stick at nothing if we gave her any excuse.
Then Anne Shirley, who couldn't have been more excited if she
was getting married herself, came to the rescue again.
"Couldn't you put a ladder up to the closet window," she said,
"And Mr. Clark can go up it and they can be married there.
Can't they, Mr. Leonard?"
Mr. Leonard agreed that they could. He was always the most saintly
looking man, but I know I saw a twinkle in his eye.
"Thomas, go over and bring our little ladder over here," I said.
Thomas forgot he was an elder, and he brought the ladder as quick
as it was possible for a fat man to do it. After all it was too
short to reach the window, but there was no time to go for another.
Stephen went up to the top of it, and he reached up and Prissy
reached down, and they could just barely clasp hands so.
I shall never forget the look of Prissy. The window was
so small she could only get her head and one arm out of it.
Besides, she was almost frightened to death.
Mr. Leonard stood at the foot of the ladder and married them.
As a rule, he makes a very long and solemn thing of the marriage ceremony,
but this time he cut out everything that wasn't absolutely necessary;
and it was well that he did, for just as he pronounced them man and wife,
Emmeline drove into the lane.
She knew perfectly well what had happened when she saw the minister
with his blue book in his hand. Never a word said she.
She marched to the front door, unlocked it, and strode upstairs.
I've always been convinced it was a mercy that closet window was
so small, or I believe that she would have thrown Prissy out of it.
As it was, she walked her downstairs by the arm and actually flung
her at Stephen.
"There, take your wife," she said, "and I'll pack up every stitch
she owns and send it after her; and I never want to see her or you
again as long as I live."
Then she turned to me and Thomas.
"As for you that have aided and abetted that weakminded fool in this,
take yourselves out of my yard and never darken my door again."
"Goodness, who wants to, you old spitfire?" said Thomas.
It wasn't just the thing for him to say, perhaps, but we are
all human, even elders.
The girls didn't escape. Emmeline looked daggers at them.
"This will be something for you to carry back to Avonlea," she said.
"You gossips down there will have enough to talk about for a spell.
That's all you ever go out of Avonlea for--just to fetch and carry tales."
Finally she finished up with the minister.
"I'm going to the Baptist church in Spencervale after this,"
she said. Her tone and look said a hundred other things.
She whirled into the house and slammed the door.
Mr. Leonard looked around on us with a pitying smile as Stephen put poor,
half-fainting Prissy into the buggy.
"I am very sorry," he said in that gently, saintly way of his,
"for the Baptists."
XI. The Miracle at Carmody
Salome looked out of the kitchen window, and a pucker of distress
appeared on her smooth forehead.
"Dear, dear, what has Lionel Hezekiah been doing now?"
she murmured anxiously.
Involuntarily she reached out for her crutch; but it was a little
beyond her reach, having fallen on the floor, and without it Salome
could not move a step.
"Well, anyway, Judith is bringing him in as fast as she can,"
she reflected. "He must have been up to something terrible this time;
for she looks very cross, and she never walks like that unless
she is angry clear through. Dear me, I am sometimes tempted
to think that Judith and I made a mistake in adopting the child.
I suppose two old maids don't know much about bringing up a boy properly.
But he is NOT a bad child, and it really seems to me that there must
be some way of making him behave better if we only knew what it was."
Salome's monologue was cut short by the entrance of her sister Judith,
holding Lionel Hezekiah by his chubby wrist with a determined grip.
Judith Marsh was ten years older than Salome, and the two
women were as different in appearance as night and day.
Salome, in spite of her thirty-five years, looked almost girlish.
She was small and pink and flower-like, with little rings
of pale golden hair clustering all over her head in a most
unspinster-like fashion, and her eyes were big and blue,
and mild as a dove's. Her face was perhaps a weak one, but it
was very sweet and appealing.
Judith Marsh was tall and dark, with a plain, tragic face
and iron-gray hair. Her eyes were black and sombre,
and every feature bespoke unyielding will and determination.
Just now she looked, as Salome had said, "angry clear through,"
and the baleful glances she cast on the small mortal she
held would have withered a more hardened criminal than six
happy-go-lucky years had made of Lionel Hezekiah.
Lionel Hezekiah, whatever his shortcomings, did not look bad.
Indeed, he was as engaging an urchin as ever beamed out on
a jolly good world through a pair of big, velvet-brown eyes.
He was chubby and firm-limbed, with a mop of beautiful golden curls,
which were the despair of his heart and the pride and joy of Salome's;
and his round face was usually a lurking-place for dimples
and smiles and sunshine.
But just now Lionel Hezekiah was under a blight; he had been caught
red-handed in guilt, and was feeling much ashamed of himself.
He hung his head and squirmed his toes under the mournful
reproach in Salome's eyes. When Salome looked at him like that,
Lionel Hezekiah always felt that he was paying more for his fun
than it was worth.
"What do you suppose I caught him doing this time?" demanded Judith.
"I--I don't know," faltered Salome.
"Firing--at--a-- mark--on--the--henhouse--door--with--
new-laid--eggs," said Judith with measured distinctness.
"He has broken every egg that was laid to-day except three.
And as for the state of that henhouse door--"
Judith paused, with an indignant gesture meant to convey that
the state of the henhouse door must be left to Salome's imagination,
since the English language was not capable of depicting it.
"O Lionel Hezekiah, why will you do such things?" said Salome miserably.
"I--didn't know it was wrong," said Lionel Hezekiah,
bursting into prompt tears. "I--I thought it would be bully fun.
Seems's if everything what's fun 's wrong."
Salome's heart was not proof against tears, as Lionel Hezekiah
very well knew. She put her arm about the sobbing culprit,
and drew him to her side.
"He didn't know it was wrong," she said defiantly to Judith.
"He's got to be taught, then," was Judith's retort.
"No, you needn't try to beg him off, Salome. He shall go right
to bed without supper, and stay there till to-morrow morning."
"Oh! not without his supper," entreated Salome. "You--you won't
improve the child's morals by injuring his stomach, Judith."
"Without his supper, I say," repeated Judith inexorably.
"Lionel Hezekiah, go up-stairs to the south room, and go
to bed at once."
Lionel Hezekiah went up-stairs, and went to bed at once.
He was never sulky or disobedient. Salome listened to him
as he stumped patiently up-stairs with a sob at every step,
and her own eyes filled with tears.
"Now don't for pity's sake go crying, Salome," said Judith irritably.
"I think I've let him off very easily. He is enough to try the patience
of a saint, and I never was that," she added with entire truth.
"But he isn't bad," pleaded Salome. "You know he never does anything
the second time after he has been told it was wrong, never."
"What good does that do when he is certain to do something new and
twice as bad? I never saw anything like him for originating ideas
of mischief. Just look at what he has done in the past fortnight--
in one fortnight, Salome. He brought in a live snake, and nearly
frightened you into fits; he drank up a bottle of liniment,
and almost poisoned himself; he took three toads to bed with him;
he climbed into the henhouse loft, and fell through on a hen and
killed her; he painted his face all over with your water-colours;
and now comes THIS exploit. And eggs at twenty-eight cents a dozen!
I tell you, Salome, Lionel Hezekiah is an expensive luxury."
"But we couldn't do without him," protested Salome.
"_I_ could. But as you can't, or think you can't, we'll have to keep him,
I suppose. But the only way to secure any peace of mind for ourselves,
as far as I can see, is to tether him in the yard, and hire somebody
to watch him."
"There must be some way of managing him," said Salome desperately.
She thought Judith was in earnest about the tethering.
Judith was generally so terribly in earnest in all she said.
"Perhaps it is because he has no other employment that he invents
so many unheard-of things. If he had anything to occupy himself with--
perhaps if we sent him to school--"
"He's too young to go to school. Father always said that no
child should go to school until it was seven, and I don't mean
Lionel Hezekiah shall. Well, I'm going to take a pail of hot
water and a brush, and see what I can do to that henhouse door.
I've got my afternoon's work cut out for me."
Judith stood Salome's crutch up beside her, and departed to purify
the henhouse door. As soon as she was safely out of the way, Salome took
her crutch, and limped slowly and painfully to the foot of the stairs.
She could not go up and comfort Lionel Hezekiah as she yearned to do,
which was the reason Judith had sent him up-stairs. Salome had not been
up-stairs for fifteen years. Neither did she dare to call him out on
the landing, lest Judith return. Besides, of course he must be punished;
he had been very naughty.
"But I wish I could smuggle a bit of supper up to him,"
she mused, sitting down on the lowest step and listening.
"I don't hear a sound. I suppose he has cried himself to sleep,
poor, dear baby. He certainly is dreadfully mischievous;
but it seems to me that it shows an investigating turn of mind,
and if it could only be directed into the proper channels--
I wish Judith would let me have a talk with Mr. Leonard about
Lionel Hezekiah. I wish Judith didn't hate ministers so.
I don't mind so much her not letting me go to church,
because I'm so lame that it would be painful anyhow; but I'd
like to talk with Mr. Leonard now and then about some things.
I can never believe that Judith and father were right; I am sure
they were not. There is a God, and I'm afraid it's terribly
wicked not to go to church. But there, nothing short of a miracle
would convince Judith; so there is no use in thinking about it.
Yes, Lionel Hezekiah must have gone to sleep."
Salome pictured him so, with his long, curling lashes brushing his rosy,
tear-stained cheek and his chubby fists clasped tightly over his breast
as was his habit; her heart grew warm and thrilling with the maternity
the picture provoked.
A year previously Lionel Hezekiah's parents, Abner and Martha Smith,
had died, leaving a houseful of children and very little else.
The children were adopted into various Carmody families,
and Salome Marsh had amazed Judith by asking to be allowed to take
the five-year-old "baby." At first Judith had laughed at the idea;
but, when she found that Salome was in earnest, she yielded.
Judith always gave Salome her own way except on one point.
"If you want the child, I suppose you must have him," she said finally.
"I wish he had a civilized name, though. Hezekiah is bad, and Lionel
is worse; but the two in combination, and tacked on to Smith at that,
is something that only Martha Smith could have invented. Her judgment
was the same clear through, from selecting husbands to names."
So Lionel Hezekiah came into Judith's home and Salome's heart.
The latter was permitted to love him all she pleased,
but Judith overlooked his training with a critical eye.
Possibly it was just as well, for Salome might otherwise have ruined
him with indulgence. Salome, who always adopted Judith's opinions,
no matter how ill they fitted her, deferred to the former's
decrees meekly, and suffered far more than Lionel Hezekiah
when he was punished.
She sat on the stairs until she fell asleep herself, her head
pillowed on her arm. Judith found her there when she came in,
severe and triumphant, from her bout with the henhouse door.
Her face softened into marvelous tenderness as she looked at Salome.
"She's nothing but a child herself in spite of her age,"
she thought pityingly. "A child that's had her whole
life thwarted and spoiled through no fault of her own.
And yet folks say there is a God who is kind and good!
If there is a God, he is a cruel, jealous tyrant, and I hate Him!"
Judith's eyes were bitter and vindictive. She thought she had
many grievances against the great Power that rules the universe,
but the most intense was Salome's helplessness--Salome, who fifteen
years before had been the brightest, happiest of maidens, light of heart
and foot, bubbling over with harmless, sparkling mirth and life.
If Salome could only walk like other women, Judith told herself
that she would not hate the great tyrannical Power.
Lionel Hezekiah was subdued and angelic for four days after that
affair of the henhouse door. Then he broke out in a new place.
One afternoon he came in sobbing, with his golden curls full of burrs.
Judith was not in, but Salome dropped her crochet-work and gazed
at him in dismay.
"Oh, Lionel Hezekiah, what have you gone and done now?"
"I--I just stuck the burrs in 'cause I was playing I was a heathen chief,"
sobbed Lionel Hezekiah. "It was great fun while it lasted; but, when I
tried to take them out, it hurt awful."
Neither Salome nor Lionel Hezekiah ever forgot the harrowing hour
that followed. With the aid of comb and scissors, Salome eventually
got the burrs out of Lionel Hezekiah's crop of curls. It would
be impossible to decide which of them suffered more in the process.
Salome cried as hard as Lionel Hezekiah did, and every snip
of the scissors or tug at the silken floss cut into her heart.
She was almost exhausted when the performance was over; but she
took the tired Lionel Hezekiah on her knee, and laid her wet cheek
against his shining head.
"Oh, Lionel Hezekiah, what does make you get into mischief
so constantly?" she sighed.
Lionel Hezekiah frowned reflectively.
"I don't know," he finally announced, "unless it's because you
don't send me to Sunday school."
Salome started as if an electric shock had passed through her frail body.
"Why, Lionel Hezekiah," she stammered, "what put such and idea
into your head?"
"Well, all the other boys go," said Lionel Hezekiah defiantly;
"and they're all better'n me; so I guess that must be the reason.
Teddy Markham says that all little boys should go to Sunday school,
and that if they don't they're sure to go to the bad place.
I don't see how you can 'spect me to behave well when you won't
send me to Sunday school.
"Would you like to go?" asked Salome, almost in a whisper.
"I'd like it bully," said Lionel Hezekiah frankly and succinctly.
"Oh, don't use such dreadful words," sighed Salome helplessly.
"I'll see what can be done. Perhaps you can go.
I'll ask your Aunt Judith."
"Oh, Aunt Judith won't let me go," said Lionel Hezekiah despondingly.
"Aunt Judith doesn't believe there is any God or any bad place.
Teddy Markham says she doesn't. He says she's an awful wicked
woman 'cause she never goes to church. So you must be wicked too,
Aunt Salome, 'cause you never go. Why don't you?"
"Your--your Aunt Judith won't let me go," faltered Salome,
more perplexed than she had ever been before in her life.
"Well, it doesn't seem to me that you have much fun on Sundays,"
remarked Lionel Hezekiah ponderingly. "I'd have more if I was you.
But I s'pose you can't 'cause you're ladies. I'm glad I'm a man.
Look at Abel Blair, what splendid times he has on Sundays. He never goes
to church, but he goes fishing, and has cock-fights, and gets drunk.
When I grow up, I'm going to do that on Sundays too, since I won't
be going to church. I don't want to go to church, but I'd like to go
to Sunday school."
Salome listened in agony. Every word of Lionel Hezekiah's stung
her conscience unbearably. So this was the result of her weak
yielding to Judith; this innocent child looked upon her as a
wicked woman, and, worse still, regarded old, depraved Abel Blair
as a model to be imitated. Oh! was it too late to undo the evil?
When Judith returned, Salome blurted out the whole story.
"Lionel Hezekiah must go to Sunday school," she concluded appealingly.
Judith's face hardened until it was as if cut in stone.
"No, he shall not," she said stubbornly. "No one living in my
household shall ever go to church or Sunday school. I gave in to you
when you wanted to teach him to say his prayers, though I knew it
was only foolish superstition, but I sha'n't yield another inch.
You know exactly how I feel on this subject, Salome; I believe
just as father did. You know he hated churches and churchgoing.
And was there ever a better, kinder, more lovable man?"
"Mother believed in God; mother always went to church," pleaded Salome.
"Mother was weak and superstitious, just as you are,"
retorted Judith inflexibly. "I tell you, Salome, I don't believe
there is a God. But, if there is, He is cruel and unjust,
and I hate Him."
"Judith!" gasped Salome, aghast at the impiety. She half expected
to see her sister struck dead at her feet.
"Don't 'Judith' me!" said Judith passionately, in the strange
anger that any discussion of the subject always roused in her.
"I mean every word I say. Before you got lame I didn't feel much
about it one way or another; I'd just as soon have gone with mother
as with father. But, when you were struck down like that,
I knew father was right."
For a moment Salome quailed. She felt that she could not, dare not,
stand out against Judith. For her own sake she could not have done so,
but the thought of Lionel Hezekiah nerved her to desperation.
She struck her thin, bleached little hands wildly together.
"Judith, I'm going to church to-morrow," she cried. "I tell you
I am, I won't set Lionel Hezekiah a bad example one day longer.
I'll not take him; I won't go against you in that, for it is your
bounty feeds and clothes him; but I'm going myself."
"If you do, Salome Marsh, I'll never forgive you," said Judith,
her harsh face dark with anger; and then, not trusting herself
to discuss the subject any longer, she went out.
Salome dissolved into her ready tears, and cried most of the night.
But her resolution did not fail. Go to church she would,
for that dear baby's sake.
Judith would not speak to her at breakfast, and this almost broke
Salome's heart; but she dared not yield. After breakfast, she limped
painfully into her room, and still more painfully dressed herself.
When she was ready, she took a little old worn Bible out of her box.
It had been her mother's, and Salome read a chapter in it every night,
although she never dared to let Judith see her doing it.
When she limped out into the kitchen, Judith looked up with a hard face.
A flame of sullen anger glowed in her dark eyes, and she went
into the sitting-room and shut the door, as if by that act she
were shutting her sister for evermore out of her heart and life.
Salome, strung up to the last pitch of nervous tension,
felt intuitively the significance of that closed door.
For a moment she wavered--oh, she could not go against Judith! She was
all but turning back to her room when Lionel Hezekiah came running in,
and paused to look at her admiringly.
"You look just bully, Aunt Salome," he said. "Where are you going?"
"Don't use that word, Lionel Hezekiah," pleaded Salome. "I'm going
to church."
"Take me with you," said Lionel Hezekiah promptly.
Salome shook her head.
"I can't, dear. Your Aunt Judith wouldn't like it. Perhaps she
will let you go after a while. Now do be a good boy while I am away,
won't you? Don't do any naughty things." "I won't do them if I know
they're naughty," conceded Lionel Hezekiah. "But that's just the trouble;
I don't know what's naughty and what ain't. Prob'ly if I went to Sunday
school I'd find out."
Salome limped out of the yard and down the lane bordered by its asters
and goldenrod. Fortunately the church was just outside the lane,
across the main road; but Salome found it hard to cover even
that short distance. She felt almost exhausted when she reached
the church and toiled painfully up the aisle to her mother's old pew.
She laid her crutch on the seat, and sank into the corner by the window
with a sigh of relief.
She had elected to come early so that she might get there
before the rest of the people. The church was as yet empty,
save for a class of Sunday school children and their teacher
in a remote corner, who paused midway in their lesson to stare
with amazement at the astonishing sigh of Salome Marsh
limping into church.
The big building, shadowy from the great elms around it,
was very still. A faint murmur came from the closed room behind
the pulpit where the rest of the Sunday school was assembled.
In front of the pulpit was a stand bearing tall white
geraniums in luxuriant blossom. The light fell through the
stained-glass window in a soft tangle of hues upon the floor.
Salome felt a sense of peace and happiness fill her heart.
Even Judith's anger lost its importance. She leaned her head
against the window-sill, and gave herself up to the flood
of tender old recollections that swept over her.
Memory went back to the years of her childhood when she had
sat in this pew every Sunday with her mother. Judith had
come then, too, always seeming grown up to Salome by reason of her
ten years' seniority. Her tall, dark, reserved father never came.
Salome knew that the Carmody people called him an infidel,
and looked upon him as a very wicked man. But he had not been wicked;
he had been good and kind in his own odd way.
The gentle little mother had died when Salome was ten years old,
but so loving and tender was Judith's care that the child
did not miss anything out of her life. Judith Marsh loved
her little sister with an intensity that was maternal.
She herself was a plain, repellent girl, liked by few,
sought after by no man; but she was determined that Salome should
have everything that she had missed--admiration, friendship, love.
She would have a vicarious youth in Salome's.
All went according to Judith's planning until Salome was eighteen,
and then trouble after trouble came. Their father, whom Judith
had understood and passionately loved, died; Salome's young
lover was killed in a railroad accident; and finally Salome
herself developed symptoms of the hip-disease which,
springing from a trifling injury, eventually left her a cripple.
Everything possible was done for her. Judith, falling heir to a snug
little fortune by the death of the old aunt for whom she was named,
spared nothing to obtain the best medical skill, and in vain.
One and all, the great doctors failed.
Judith had borne her father's death bravely enough in spite of her
agony of grief; she had watched her sister pining and fading with
the pain of her broken heart without growing bitter; but when she
knew at last that Salome would never walk again save as she hobbled
painfully about on her crutch, the smouldering revolt in her soul broke
its bounds, and overflowed her nature in a passionate rebellion against
the Being who had sent, or had failed to prevent, these calamities.
She did not rave or denounce wildly; that was not Judith's way;
but she never went to church again, and it soon became an accepted
fact in Carmody that Judith Marsh was as rank an infidel as her father
had been before her; nay, worse, since she would not even allow Salome
to go to church, and shut the door in the minister's face when he went
to see her.
"I should have stood out against her for conscience' sake,"
reflected Salome in her pew self-reproachfully. "But, O dear,
I'm afraid she'll never forgive me, and how can I live if she
doesn't? But I must endure it for Lionel Hezekiah's sake;
my weakness has perhaps done him great harm already.
They say that what a child learns in the first seven years never
leaves him; so Lionel Hezekiah has only another year to get set
right about these things. Oh, if I've left it till too late!"
When the people began to come in, Salome felt painfully the curious
glances directed at her. Look where she would, she met them,
unless she looked out of the window; so out of the window she did
look unswervingly, her delicate little face burning crimson with
self-consciousness. She could see her home and its back yard plainly,
with Lionel Hezekiah making mud-pies joyfully in the corner.
Presently she saw Judith come out of the house and stride away to
the pine wood behind it. Judith always betook herself to the pines
in time of mental stress and strain.
Salome could see the sunlight shining on Lionel Hezekiah's bare
head as he mixed his pies. In the pleasure of watching him she
forgot where she was and the curious eyes turned on her.
Suddenly Lionel Hezekiah ceased concocting pies, and betook himself to the
corner of the summer kitchen, where he proceeded to climb up to the top
of the storm-fence and from there to mount the sloping kitchen roof.
Salome clasped her hands in agony. What if the child should fall?
Oh! why had Judith gone away and left him alone? What if--what if--
and then, while her brain with lightning-like rapidity pictured
forth a dozen possible catastrophes, something really did happen.
Lionel Hezekiah slipped, sprawled wildly, slid down, and fell off
the roof, in a bewildering whirl of arms and legs, plump into the big
rain-water hogshead under the spout, which was generally full to the brim
with rain-water, a hogshead big and deep enough to swallow up half
a dozen small boys who went climbing kitchen roofs on a Sunday.
Then something took place that is talked of in Carmody to this day,
and even fiercely wrangled over, so many and conflicting are the opinions
on the subject. Salome Marsh, who had not walked a step without
assistance for fifteen years, suddenly sprang to her feet with a shriek,
ran down the aisle, and out of the door!
Every man, woman, and child in the Carmody church followed her,
even to the minister, who had just announced his text.
When they got out, Salome was already half-way up her lane,
running wildly. In her heart was room for but one agonized thought.
Would Lionel Hezekiah be drowned before she reached him?
She opened the gate of the yard, and panted across it just as a tall,
grim-faced woman came around the corner of the house and stood rooted
to the ground in astonishment at the sight that met her eyes.
But Salome saw nobody. She flung herself against the hogshead
and looked in, sick with terror at what she might see.
What she did see was Lionel Hezekiah sitting on the bottom
of the hogshead in water that came only to his waist.
He was looking rather dazed and bewildered, but was
apparently quite uninjured.
The yard was full of people, but nobody had as yet said a word;
awe and wonder held everybody in spellbound silence.
Judith was the first to speak. She pushed through the crowd
to Salome. Her face was blanched to a deadly whiteness;
and her eyes, as Mrs. William Blair afterwards declared,
were enough to give a body the creeps.
"Salome," she said in a high, shrill, unnatural voice,
"where is your crutch?"
Salome came to herself at the question. For the first time,
she realized that she had walked, nay, run, all that distance from
the church alone and unaided. She turned pale, swayed, and would
have fallen if Judith had not caught her.
Old Dr. Blair came forward briskly.
"Carry her in," he said, "and don't all of you come crowding in, either.
She wants quiet and rest for a spell."
Most of the people obediently returned to the church,
their sudden loosened tongues clattering in voluble excitement.
A few women assisted Judith to carry Salome in and lay her on
the kitchen lounge, followed by the doctor and the dripping
Lionel Hezekiah, whom the minister had lifted out of the hogshead
and to whom nobody now paid the slightest attention.
Salome faltered out her story, and her hearers listened
with varying emotions.
"It's a miracle," said Sam Lawson in an awed voice.
Dr. Blair shrugged his shoulders. "There is no miracle
about it," he said bluntly. "It's all perfectly natural.
The disease in the hip has evidently been quite well for a long time;
Nature does sometimes work cures like that when she is let alone.
The trouble was that the muscles were paralyzed by long disuse.
That paralysis was overcome by the force of a strong and
instinctive effort. Salome, get up and walk across the kitchen."
Salome obeyed. She walked across the kitchen and back, slowly,
stiffly, falteringly, now that the stimulus of frantic fear was spent;
but still she walked. The doctor nodded his satisfaction.
"Keep that up every day. Walk as much as you can without tiring yourself,
and you'll soon be as spry as ever. No more need of crutches for you,
but there's no miracle in the case."
Judith Marsh turned to him. She had not spoken a word since her
question concerning Salome's crutch. Now she said passionately:
"It WAS a miracle. God has worked it to prove His existence for me,
and I accept the proof."
The old doctor shrugged his shoulders again. Being a wise man,
he knew when to hold his tongue.
"Well, put Salome to bed, and let her sleep the rest of the day.
She's worn out. And for pity's sake let some one take that poor child
and put some dry clothes on him before he catches his death of cold."
That evening, as Salome Marsh lay in her bed in a glory
of sunset light, her heart filled with unutterable gratitude
and happiness, Judith came into the room. She wore her best
hat and dress, and she held Lionel Hezekiah by the hand.
Lionel Hezekiah's beaming face was scrubbed clean, and his
curls fell in beautiful sleekness over the lace collar of
his velvet suit.
"How do you feel now, Salome?" asked Judith gently.
"Better. I've had a lovely sleep. But where are you going, Judith?"
"I am going to church," said Judith firmly, "and I am going to take
Lionel Hezekiah with me."
XII. The End of a Quarrel
Nancy Rogerson sat down on Louisa Shaw's front doorstep and looked
about her, drawing a long breath of delight that seemed tinged with pain.
Everything was very much the same; the square garden was as charming
bodge-podge of fruit and flowers, and goose-berry bushes and
tiger lilies, a gnarled old apple tree sticking up here and there,
and a thick cherry copse at the foot. Behind was a row of pointed firs,
coming out darkly against the swimming pink sunset sky, not looking
a day older than they had looked twenty years ago, when Nancy
had been a young girl walking and dreaming in their shadows.
The old willow to the left was as big and sweeping and, Nancy thought
with a little shudder, probably as caterpillary, as ever.
Nancy had learned many things in her twenty years of exile from Avonlea,
but she had never learned to conquer her dread of caterpillars.
"Nothing is much changed, Louisa," she said, propping her chin
on her plump white hands, and sniffing at the delectable
odour of the bruised mint upon which Louisa was trampling.
"I'm glad; I was afraid to come back for fear you would
have improved the old garden out of existence, or else
into some prim, orderly lawn, which would have been worse.
It's as magnificently untidy as ever, and the fence still wobbles.
It CAN'T be the same fence, but it looks exactly like it.
No, nothing is much changed. Thank you, Louisa."
Louisa had not the faintest idea what Nancy was thanking her for,
but then she had never been able to fathom Nancy, much as she
had always liked her in the old girlhood days that now seemed much
further away to Louisa than they did to Nancy. Louisa was separated
from them by the fulness of wifehood and motherhood, while Nancy
looked back only over the narrow gap that empty years make.
"You haven't changed much yourself, Nancy," she said,
looking admiringly at Nancy's trim figure, in the nurse's uniform
she had donned to show Louisa what it was like, her firm,
pink-and-white face and the the glossy waves of her golden brown hair.
"You've held your own wonderfully well."
"Haven't I?" said Nancy complacently. "Modern methods
of massage and cold cream have kept away the crowsfeet,
and fortunately I had the Rogerson complexion to start with.
You wouldn't think I was really thirty-eight, would you?
Thirty-eight! Twenty years ago I thought anybody who was thirty-eight
was a perfect female Methuselah. And now I feel so horribly,
ridiculously young, Louisa. Every morning when I get up I
have to say solemnly to myself three times, 'You're an old maid,
Nancy Rogerson,' to tone myself down to anything like a becoming
attitude for the day."
"I guess you don't mind being an old maid much," said Louisa,
shrugging her shoulders. She would not have been an old maid
herself for anything; yet she inconsistently envied Nancy
her freedom, her wide life in the world, her unlined brow,
and care-free lightness of spirit.
"Oh, but I do mind," said Nancy frankly. "I hate being an old maid."
"Why don't you get married, then?" asked Louisa, paying an unconscious
tribute to Nancy's perennial chance by her use of the present tense.
Nancy shook her head.
"No, that wouldn't suit me either. I don't want to be married.
Do you remember that story Anne Shirley used to tell long ago of the pupil
who wanted to be a widow because 'if you were married your husband
bossed you and if you weren't married people called you an old maid?'
Well, that is precisely my opinion. I'd like to be a widow. Then I'd
have the freedom of the unmarried, with the kudos of the married.
I could eat my cake and have it, too. Oh, to be a widow!"
"Nancy!" said Louisa in a shocked tone.
Nancy laughed, a mellow gurgle that rippled through the garden
like a brook.
"Oh, Louisa, I can shock you yet. That was just how you used to say
'Nancy' long ago, as if I'd broken all the commandments at once."
"You do say such queer things," protested Louisa, "and half the time
I don't know what you mean."
"Bless you, dear coz, half the time I don't myself.
Perhaps the joy of coming back to the old spot has slightly
turned my brain, I've found my lost girlhood here.
I'm NOT thirty-eight in this garden--it is a flat impossibility.
I'm sweet eighteen, with a waist line two inches smaller.
Look, the sun is just setting. I see he has still his old
trick of throwing his last beams over the Wright farmhouse.
By the way, Louisa, is Peter Wright still living there?"
"Yes." Louisa threw a sudden interested glance at the
apparently placid Nancy.
"Married, I suppose, with half a dozen children?"
said Nancy indifferently, pulling up some more sprigs of mint
and pinning them on her breast. Perhaps the exertion of
leaning over to do it flushed her face. There was more than
the Rogerson colour in it, anyhow, and Louisa, slow though
her mental processes might be in some respects, thought she
understood the meaning of a blush as well as the next one.
All the instinct of the matchmaker flamed up in her.
"Indeed he isn't," she said promptly. "Peter Wright has never married.
He has been faithful to your memory, Nancy."
"Ugh! You make me feel as if I were buried up there in the Avonlea
cemetery and had a monument over me with a weeping willow carved on it,"
shivered Nancy. "When it is said that a man has been faithful
to a woman's memory it generally means that he couldn't get anyone
else to take him."
"That isn't the case with Peter," protested Louisa. "He is a good match,
and many a woman would have been glad to take him, and would yet.
He's only forty-three. But he's never taken the slightest interest
in anyone since you threw him over, Nancy."
"But I didn't. He threw me over," said Nancy, plaintively,
looking afar over the low-lying fields and a feathery young
spruce valley to the white buildings of the Wright farm,
glowing rosily in the sunset light when all the rest of Avonlea
was scarfing itself in shadows. There was laughter in her eyes.
Louisa could not pierce beneath that laughter to find if there
were anything under it.
"Fudge!" said Louisa. "What on earth did you and Peter quarrel about?"
she added, curiously.
"I've often wondered," parried Nancy.
"And you've never seen him since?" reflected Louisa.
"No. Has he changed much?"
"Well, some. He is gray and kind of tired-looking. But
it isn't to be wondered at--living the life he does.
He hasn't had a housekeeper for two years--not since his old
aunt died. He just lives there alone and cooks his own meals.
I've never been in the house, but folks say the disorder
is something awful."
"Yes, I shouldn't think Peter was cut out for a tidy housekeeper,"
said Nancy lightly, dragging up more mint. "Just think, Louisa, if it
hadn't been for that old quarrel I might be Mrs. Peter Wright
at this very moment, mother to the aforesaid supposed half dozen,
and vexing my soul over Peter's meals and socks and cows."
"I guess you are better off as you are," said Louisa.
"Oh, I don't know." Nancy looked up at the white house on
the hill again. "I have an awfully good time out of life,
but it doesn't seem to satisfy, somehow. To be candid--
and oh, Louisa, candour is a rare thing among women when it comes
to talking of the men--I believe I'd rather be cooking Peter's
meals and dusting his house. I wouldn't mind his bad grammar now.
I've learned one or two valuable little things out yonder,
and one is that it doesn't matter if a man's grammar is askew,
so long as he doesn't swear at you. By the way, is Peter
as ungrammatical as ever?"
"I--I don't know," said Louisa helplessly. "I never knew
he WAS ungrammatical."
"Does he still say, 'I seen,' and 'them things'?" demanded Nancy.
"I never noticed," confessed Louisa.
"Enviable Louisa! Would that I had been born with that blessed
faculty of never noticing! It stands a woman in better stead
than beauty or brains. _I_ used to notice Peter's mistakes.
When he said 'I seen,' it jarred on me in my salad days.
I tried, oh, so tactfully, to reform him in that respect.
Peter didn't like being reformed--the Wrights always
had a fairly good opinion of themselves, you know.
It was really over a question of syntax we quarrelled.
Peter told me I'd have to take him as he was, grammar and all,
or go without him. I went without him--and ever since I've
been wondering if I were really sorry, or if it were merely
a pleasantly sentimental regret I was hugging to my heart.
I daresay it's the latter. Now, Louisa, I see the beginning
of the plot far down in those placid eyes of yours.
Strangle it at birth, dear Louisa. There is no use in your trying
to make up a match between Peter and me now--no, nor in slyly
inviting him up here to tea some evening, as you are even this
moment thinking of doing."
"Well, I must go and milk the cows," gasped Louisa, rather glad to make
her escape. Nancy's power of thought-reading struck her as uncanny.
She felt afraid to remain with her cousin any longer, lest Nancy should
drag to light all the secrets of her being.
Nancy sat long on the steps after Louisa had gone--sat until
the night came down, darkly and sweetly, over the garden,
and the stars twinkled out above the firs. This had been her home
in girlhood. Here she had lived and kept house for her father.
When he died, Curtis Shaw, newly married to her cousin Louisa,
bought the farm from her and moved in. Nancy stayed
on with them, expecting soon to go to a home of her own.
She and Peter Wright were engaged.
Then came their mysterious quarrel, concerning the cause of which
kith and kin on both sides were left in annoying ignorance.
Of the results they were not ignorant. Nancy promptly
packed up and left Avonlea seven hundred miles behind her.
She went to a hospital in Montreal and studied nursing.
In the twenty years that followed she had never even
revisited Avonlea. Her sudden descent on it this summer was a whim
born of a moment's homesick longing for this same old garden.
She had not thought about Peter. In very truth, she had
thought little about Peter for the last fifteen years.
She supposed that she had forgotten him. But now, sitting on
the old doorstep, where she had often sat in her courting days,
with Peter lounging on a broad stone at her feet, something tugged
at her heartstrings. She looked over the valley to the light
in the kitchen of the Wright farmhouse, and pictured Peter
sitting there, lonely and uncared for, with naught but the cold
comfort of his own providing.
"Well, he should have got married," she said snappishly.
"I am not going to worry because he is a lonely old bachelor when
all these years I have supposed him a comfy Benedict. Why doesn't
he hire him a housekeeper, at least? He can afford it;
the place looks prosperous. Ugh! I've a fat bank account,
and I've seen almost everything in the world worth seeing; but I've
got several carefully hidden gray hairs and a horrible conviction
that grammar isn't one of the essential things in life after all.
Well, I'm not going to moon out here in the dew any longer.
I'm going in to read the smartest, frilliest, frothiest society
novel in my trunk."
In the week that followed Nancy enjoyed herself after her own fashion.
She read and swung in the garden, having a hammock hung under the firs.
She went far afield, in rambles to woods and lonely uplands.
"I like it much better than meeting people," she said,
when Louisa suggested going to see this one and that one,
"especially the Avonlea people. All my old chums are gone,
or hopelessly married and changed, and the young set who have come
up know not Joseph, and make me feel uncomfortably middle-aged.
It's far worse to feel middle-aged than old, you know.
Away there in the woods I feel as eternally young as Nature herself.
And oh, it's so nice not having to fuss with thermometers
and temperatures and other people's whims. Let me indulge my
own whims, Louisa dear, and punish me with a cold bite when I
come in late for meals. I'm not even going to church again.
It was horrible there yesterday. The church is so offensively
spick-and-span brand new and modern."
"It's thought to be the prettiest church in these parts,"
protested Louisa, a little sorely.
"Churches shouldn't be pretty--they should at least be fifty years
old and mellowed into beauty. New churches are an abomination."
"Did you see Peter Wright in church?" asked Louisa. She had been
bursting to ask it.
Nancy nodded.
"Verily, yes. He sat right across from me in the corner pew.
I didn't think him painfully changed. Iron-gray hair becomes him.
But I was horribly disappointed in myself. I had expected
to feel at least a romantic thrill, but all I felt was a
comfortable interest, such as I might have taken in any old friend.
Do my utmost, Louisa, I couldn't compass a thrill."
"Did he come to speak to you?" asked Louisa, who hadn't any idea
what Nancy meant by her thrills.
"Alas, no. It wasn't my fault. I stood at the door outside
with the most amiable expression I could assume, but Peter
merely sauntered away without a glance in my direction.
It would be some comfort to my vanity if I could believe it was on
account of rankling spite or pride. But the honest truth, dear Weezy,
is that it looked to me exactly as if he never thought of it.
He was more interested in talking about the hay crop with Oliver Sloane--
who, by the way, is more Oliver Sloaneish than ever."
"If you feel as you said you did the other night, why didn't you go
and speak to him?" Louisa wanted to know.
"But I don't feel that way now. That was just a mood.
You don't know anything about moods, dearie. You don't know
what it is to yearn desperately one hour for something you
wouldn't take if it were offered you the next."
"But that is foolishness," protested Louisa.
"To be sure it is--rank foolishness. But oh, it is so delightful to be
foolish after being compelled to be unbrokenly sensible for twenty years.
Well, I'm going picking strawberries this afternoon, Lou. Don't wait
tea for me. I probably won't be back till dark. I've only four more
days to stay and I want to make the most of them."
Nancy wandered far and wide in her rambles that afternoon. When she
had filled her jug she still roamed about with delicious aimlessness.
Once she found herself in a wood lane skirting a field wherein a man
was mowing hay. The man was Peter Wright. Nancy walked faster when she
discovered this, with never a roving glance, and presently the green,
ferny depths of the maple woods swallowed her up.
From old recollections, she knew that she was on
Peter Morrison's land, and calculated that if she kept straight
on she would come out where the old Morrison house used to be.
Her calculations proved correct, with a trifling variation.
She came out fifty yards south of the old deserted Morrison house,
and found herself in the yard of the Wright farm!
Passing the house--the house where she had once dreamed
of reigning as mistress--Nancy's curiosity overcame her.
The place was not in view of any other near house.
She deliberately went up to it intending--low be it spoken--
to peep in at the kitchen window. But, seeing the door
wide open, she went to it instead and halted on the step,
looking about her keenly.
The kitchen was certainly pitiful in its disorder.
The floor had apparently not been swept for a fortnight.
On the bare deal table were the remnants of Peter's dinner,
a meal that could not have been very tempting at its best.
"What a miserable place for a human being to live in!"
groaned Nancy. "Look at the ashes on that stove!
And that table! Is it any wonder that Peter has got gray?
He'll work hard haymaking all the afternoon--and then come
home to THIS!"
An idea suddenly darted into Nancy's brain. At first she looked aghast.
Then she laughed and glanced at her watch.
"I'll do it--just for fun and a little pity. It's half-past two,
and Peter won't be home till four at the earliest. I'll have
a good hour to do it in, and still make my escape in good time.
Nobody will ever know; nobody can see me here."
Nancy went in, threw off her hat, and seized a broom.
The first thing she did was to give the kitchen a thorough sweeping.
Then she kindled a fire, put a kettle full of water on to heat,
and attacked the dishes. From the number of them she rightly
concluded that Peter hadn't washed any for at least a week.
"I suppose he just uses the clean ones as long as they
hold out, and then has a grand wash-up," she laughed.
"I wonder where he keeps his dish-towels, if he has any."
Evidently Peter hadn't any. At least, Nancy couldn't find any.
She marched boldly into the dusty sitting-room and explored
the drawers of an old-fashioned sideboard, confiscating a
towel she found there. As she worked, she hummed a song;
her steps were light and her eyes bright with excitement.
Nancy was enjoying herself thoroughly, there was no doubt of that.
The spice of mischief in the adventure pleased her mightily.
The dishes washed, she hunted up a clean, but yellow and evidently long
unused tablecloth out of the sideboard, and proceeded to set the table
and get Peter's tea. She found bread and butter in the pantry,
a trip to the cellar furnished a pitcher of cream, and Nancy recklessly
heaped the contents of her strawberry jug on Peter's plate.
The tea was made and set back to keep warm. And, as a finishing touch,
Nancy ravaged the old neglected garden and set a huge bowl of crimson
roses in the centre of the table.
"Now I must go," she said aloud. "Wouldn't it be fun to see Peter's
face when he comes in, though? Ha-hum! I've enjoyed doing this--
but why? Nancy Rogerson, don't be asking yourself conundrums.
Put on your hat and proceed homeward, constructing on your way some
reliable fib to account to Louisa for the absence of your strawberries."
Nancy paused a moment and looked around wistfully.
She had made the place look cheery and neat and homelike.
She felt that queer tugging at her heart-strings again.
Suppose she belonged here, and was waiting for Peter
to come home to tea. Suppose--Nancy whirled around with a
sudden horrible prescience of what she was going to see!
Peter Wright was standing in the doorway.
Nancy's face went crimson. For the first time in her life she had not
a word to say for herself. Peter looked at her and then at the table,
with its fruit and flowers.
"Thank you," he said politely.
Nancy recovered herself. With a shame-faced laugh, she held
out her hand.
"Don't have me arrested for trespass, Peter. I came
and looked in at your kitchen out of impertinent curiosity,
and just for fun I thought I'd come in and get your tea.
I thought you'd be so surprised--and I meant to go before you
came home, of course."
"I wouldn't have been surprised," said Peter, shaking hands.
"I saw you go past the field and I tied the horses and followed you
down through the woods. I've been sitting on the fence back yonder,
watching your comings and goings." "Why didn't you come and speak
to me at church yesterday, Peter?" demanded Nancy boldly.
"I was afraid I would say something ungrammatical,"
answered Peter drily.
The crimson flamed over Nancy's face again. She pulled her hand away.
"That's cruel of you, Peter."
Peter suddenly laughed. There was a note of boyishness in the laughter.
"So it is," he said, "but I had to get rid of the accumulated
malice and spite of twenty years somehow. It's all gone now,
and I'll be as amiable as I know how. But since you have gone
to the trouble of getting my supper for me, Nancy, you must
stay and help me eat it. Them strawberries look good.
I haven't had any this summer--been too busy to pick them."
Nancy stayed. She sat at the head of Peter's table and poured
his tea for him. She talked to him wittily of the Avonlea people
and the changes in their old set. Peter followed her lead
with an apparent absence of self-consciousness, eating his supper
like a man whose heart and mind were alike on good terms with him.
Nancy felt wretched--and, at the same time, ridiculously happy.
It seemed the most grotesque thing in the world that she should
be presiding there at Peter's table, and yet the most natural.
There were moments when she felt like crying--other moments when
her laughter was as ready and spontaneous as a girl's. Sentiment
and humour had always waged an equal contest in Nancy's nature.
When Peter had finished his strawberries he folded his arms
on the table and looked admiringly at Nancy.
"You look well at the head of a table, Nancy," he said critically.
"How is it that you haven't been presiding at one of your own long
before this? I thought you'd meet a lots of men out in the world
that you'd like--men who talked good grammar."
"Peter, don't!" said Nancy, wincing. "I was a goose."
"No, you were quite right. I was a tetchy fool. If I'd had any sense,
I'd have felt thankful you thought enough of me to want to improve me,
and I'd have tried to kerrect my mistakes instead of getting mad.
It's too late now, I suppose."
"Too late for what?" said Nancy, plucking up heart of grace
at something in Peter's tone and look.
"For--kerrecting mistakes."
"Grammatical ones?"
"Not exactly. I guess them mistakes are past kerrecting in an old
fellow like me. Worse mistakes, Nancy. I wonder what you would
say if I asked you to forgive me, and have me after all."
"I'd snap you up before you'd have time to change your mind,"
said Nancy brazenly. She tried to look Peter in the face,
but her blue eyes, where tears and mirth were blending,
faltered down before his gray ones.
Peter stood up, knocking over his chair, and strode around
the table to her.
"Nancy, my girl!" he said.
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