Chronicles of Avonlea

L >> Lucy Maud Montgomery >> Chronicles of Avonlea

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"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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