Chronicles of Avonlea
L >>
Lucy Maud Montgomery >> Chronicles of Avonlea
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15
"I hate the new day," she said rebelliously. "It will be just
like all the other hard, common days. I don't want to get up
and live it. And, oh, to think that long ago I reached out my
hands joyfully to every new day, as to a friend who was
bringing me good tidings! I loved the mornings then--sunny or
gray, they were as delightful as an unread book--and now I
hate them--hate them--hate them!"
But the Old Lady got up nevertheless, for she knew Crooked
Jack would be coming early to finish the garden. She arranged
her beautiful, thick, white hair very carefully, and put on
her purple silk dress with the little gold spots in it. The
Old Lady always wore silk from motives of economy. It was much
cheaper to wear a silk dress that had belonged to her mother
than to buy new print at the store. The Old Lady had plenty of
silk dresses which had belonged to her mother. She wore them
morning, noon, and night, and Spencervale people considered it
an additional evidence of her pride. As for the fashion of
them, it was, of course, just because she was too mean to have
them made over. They did not dream that the Old Lady never put
on one of the silk dresses without agonizing over its
unfashionableness, and that even the eyes of Crooked Jack cast
on her antique flounces and overskirts was almost more than
her feminine vanity could endure.
In spite of the fact that the Old Lady had not welcomed the
new day, its beauty charmed her when she went out for a walk
after her dinner--or, rather, after her mid-day biscuit. It
was so fresh, so sweet, so virgin; and the spruce woods around
the old Lloyd place were athrill with busy spring doings and
all sprinkled through with young lights and shadows. Some of
their delight found its way into the Old Lady's bitter heart
as she wandered through them, and when she came out at the
little plank bridge over the brook down under the beeches, she
felt almost gentle and tender once more. There was one big
beech there, in particular, which the Old Lady loved for
reasons best known to herself--a great, tall beech with a
trunk like the shaft of a gray marble column and a leafy
spread of branches over the still, golden-brown pool made
beneath it by the brook. It had been a young sapling in the
days that were haloed by the vanished glory of the Old Lady's
life.
The Old Lady heard childish voices and laughter afar up the
lane which led to William Spencer's place just above the
woods. William Spencer's front lane ran out to the main road
in a different direction, but this "back lane" furnished a
short cut and his children always went to school that way.
The Old Lady shrank hastily back behind a clump of young
spruces. She did not like the Spencer children because they
always seemed so afraid of her. Through the spruce screen she
could see them coming gaily down the lane--the two older ones
in front, the twins behind, clinging to the hands of a tall,
slim, young girl--the new music teacher, probably. The Old
Lady had heard from the egg pedlar that she was going to board
at William Spencer's, but she had not heard her name.
She looked at her with some curiosity as they drew near--and
then, all at once, the Old Lady's heart gave a great bound and
began to beat as it had not beaten for years, while her breath
came quickly and she trembled violently. Who--WHO could this
girl be?
Under the new music teacher's straw hat were masses of fine
chestnut hair of the very shade and wave that the Old Lady
remembered on another head in vanished years; from under those
waves looked large, violet-blue eyes with very black lashes
and brows--and the Old Lady knew those eyes as well as she
knew her own; and the new music teacher's face, with all its
beauty of delicate outline and dainty colouring and glad,
buoyant youth, was a face from the Old Lady's past--a perfect
resemblance in every respect save one; the face which the Old
Lady remembered had been weak, with all its charm; but this
girl's face possessed a fine, dominant strength compact of
sweetness and womanliness. As she passed by the Old Lady's
hiding place she laughed at something one of the children
said; and oh, but the Old Lady knew that laughter well. She
had heard it before under that very beech tree.
She watched them until they disappeared over the wooded hill
beyond the bridge; and then she went back home as if she
walked in a dream. Crooked Jack was delving vigorously in the
garden; ordinarily the Old Lady did not talk much with Crooked
Jack, for she disliked his weakness for gossip; but now she
went into the garden, a stately old figure in her purple,
gold-spotted silk, with the sunshine gleaming on her white
hair.
Crooked Jack had seen her go out and had remarked to himself
that the Old Lady was losing ground; she was pale and peaked-
looking. He now concluded that he had been mistaken. The Old
Lady's cheeks were pink and her eyes shining. Somewhere in her
walk she had shed ten years at least. Crooked Jack leaned on
his spade and decided that there weren't many finer looking
women anywhere than Old Lady Lloyd. Pity she was such an old
miser!
"Mr. Spencer," said the Old Lady graciously--she always spoke
very graciously to her inferiors when she talked to them at
all--"can you tell me the name of the new music teacher who is
boarding at Mr. William Spencer's?"
"Sylvia Gray," said Crooked Jack.
The Old Lady's heart gave another great bound. But she had
known it--she had known that girl with Leslie Gray's hair and
eyes and laugh must be Leslie Gray's daughter.
Crooked Jack spat on his hand and resumed his work, but his
tongue went faster than his spade, and the Old Lady listened
greedily. For the first time she enjoyed and blessed Crooked
Jack's garrulity and gossip. Every word he uttered was as an
apple of gold in a picture of silver to her.
He had been working at William Spencer's the day the new music
teacher had come, and what Crooked Jack couldn't find out
about any person in one whole day--at least as far as outward
life went--was hardly worth finding out. Next to discovering
things did he love telling them, and it would be hard to say
which enjoyed that ensuing half-hour more--Crooked Jack or the
Old Lady.
Crooked Jack's account, boiled down, amounted to this; both
Miss Gray's parents had died when she was a baby, she had been
brought up by an aunt, she was very poor and very ambitious.
"Wants a moosical eddication," finished up Crooked Jack, "and,
by jingo, she orter have it, for anything like the voice of
her I never heerd. She sung for us that evening after supper
and I thought 'twas an angel singing. It just went through me
like a shaft o' light. The Spencer young ones are crazy over
her already. She's got twenty pupils around here and in
Grafton and Avonlea."
When the Old Lady had found out everything Crooked Jack could
tell her, she went into the house and sat down by the window
of her little sitting-room to think it all over. She was
tingling from head to foot with excitement.
Leslie's daughter! This Old Lady had had her romance once.
Long ago--forty years ago--she had been engaged to Leslie
Gray, a young college student who taught in Spencervale for
the summer term one year--the golden summer of Margaret
Lloyd's life. Leslie had been a shy, dreamy, handsome fellow
with literary ambitions, which, as he and Margaret both firmly
believed, would one day bring him fame and fortune.
Then there had been a foolish, bitter quarrel at the end of
that golden summer. Leslie had gone away in anger, afterwards
he had written, but Margaret Lloyd, still in the grasp of her
pride and resentment, had sent a harsh answer. No more letters
came; Leslie Gray never returned; and one day Margaret wakened
to the realization that she had put love out of her life for
ever. She knew it would never be hers again; and from that
moment her feet were turned from youth to walk down the valley
of shadow to a lonely, eccentric age.
Many years later she heard of Leslie's marriage; then came
news of his death, after a life that had not fulfilled his
dreams for him. Nothing more she had heard or known--nothing
to this day, when she had seen his daughter pass her by
unseeing in the beech hollow.
"His daughter! And she might have been MY daughter,"
murmured the Old Lady. "Oh, if I could only know her and love
her--and perhaps win her love in return! But I cannot. I could
not have Leslie Gray's daughter know how poor I am--how low I
have been brought. I could not bear that. And to think she is
living so near me, the darling--just up the lane and over the
hill. I can see her go by every day--I can have that dear
pleasure, at least. But oh, if I could only do something for
her--give her some little pleasure! It would be such a
delight."
When the Old Lady happened to go into her spare room that
evening, she saw from it a light shining through a gap in the
trees on the hill. She knew that it shone from the Spencers'
spare room. So it was Sylvia's light. The Old Lady stood in
the darkness and watched it until it went out--watched it with
a great sweetness breathing in her heart, such as risen from
old rose-leaves when they are stirred. She fancied Sylvia
moving about her room, brushing and braiding her long,
glistening hair--laying aside her little trinkets and girlish
adornments--making her simple preparations for sleep. When the
light went out the Old Lady pictured a slight white figure
kneeling by the window in the soft starshine, and the Old Lady
knelt down then and there and said her own prayers in
fellowship. She said the simple form of words she had always
used; but a new spirit seemed to inspire them; and she
finished with a new petition--"Let me think of something I can
do for her, dear Father--some little, little thing that I can
do for her."
The Old Lady had slept in the same room all her life--the one
looking north into the spruces--and loved it; but the next day
she moved into the spare room without a regret. It was to be
her room after this; she must be where she could see Sylvia's
light, she put the bed where she could lie in it and look at
that earth star which had suddenly shone across the twilight
shadows of her heart. She felt very happy, she had not felt
happy for many years; but now a strange, new, dream-like
interest, remote from the harsh realities of her existence,
but none the less comforting and alluring, had entered into
her life. Besides, she had thought of something she could do
for Sylvia--"a little, little thing" that might give her
pleasure.
Spencervale people were wont to say regretfully that there
were no Mayflowers in Spencervale; the Spencervale young fry,
when they wanted Mayflowers, thought they had to go over to
the barrens at Avonlea, six miles away, for them. Old Lady
Lloyd knew better. In her many long, solitary rambles, she had
discovered a little clearing far back in the woods--a
southward-sloping, sandy hill on a tract of woodland belonging
to a man who lived in town--which in spring was starred over
with the pink and white of arbutus.
To this clearing the Old Lady betook herself that afternoon,
walking through wood lanes and under dim spruce arches like a
woman with a glad purpose. All at once the spring was dear and
beautiful to her once more; for love had entered again into
her heart, and her starved soul was feasting on its divine
nourishment.
Old Lady Lloyd found a wealth of Mayflowers on the sandy hill.
She filled her basket with them, gloating over the loveliness
which was to give pleasure to Sylvia. When she got home she
wrote on a slip of paper, "For Sylvia." It was not likely
anyone in Spencervale would know her handwriting, but, to make
sure, she disguised it, writing in round, big letters like a
child's. She carried her Mayflowers down to the hollow and
heaped them in a recess between the big roots of the old
beech, with the little note thrust through a stem on top.
Then the Old Lady deliberately hid behind the spruce clump.
She had put on her dark green silk on purpose for hiding. She
had not long to wait. Soon Sylvia Gray came down the hill with
Mattie Spencer. When she reached the bridge she saw the
Mayflowers and gave an exclamation of delight. Then she saw
her name and her expression changed to wonder. The Old Lady,
peering through the boughs, could have laughed for very
pleasure over the success of her little plot.
"For me!" said Sylvia, lifting the flowers. "CAN they really
be for me, Mattie? Who could have left them here?"
Mattie giggled.
"I believe it was Chris Stewart," she said. "I know he was
over at Avonlea last night. And ma says he's taken a notion to
you--she knows by the way he looked at you when you were
singing night before last. It would be just like him to do
something queer like this--he's such a shy fellow with the
girls."
Sylvia frowned a little. She did not like Mattie's
expressions, but she did like Mayflowers, and she did not
dislike Chris Stewart, who had seemed to her merely a nice,
modest, country boy. She lifted the flowers and buried her
face in them.
"Anyway, I'm much obliged to the giver, whoever he or she is,"
she said merrily. "There's nothing I love like Mayflowers. Oh,
how sweet they are!"
When they had passed the Old Lady emerged from her lurking
place, flushed with triumph. It did not vex her that Sylvia
should think Chris Stewart had given her the flowers; nay, it
was all the better, since she would be the less likely to
suspect the real donor. The main thing was that Sylvia should
have the delight of them. That quite satisfied the Old Lady,
who went back to her lonely house with the cockles of her
heart all in a glow.
It soon was a matter of gossip in Spencervale that Chris
Stewart was leaving Mayflowers at the beech hollow for the
music teacher every other day. Chris himself denied it, but he
was not believed. Firstly, there were no Mayflowers in
Spencervale; secondly, Chris had to go to Carmody every other
day to haul milk to the butter factory, and Mayflowers grew in
Carmody, and, thirdly, the Stewarts always had a romantic
streak in them. Was not that enough circumstantial evidence
for anybody?
As for Sylvia, she did not mind if Chris had a boyish
admiration for her and expressed it thus delicately. She
thought it very nice of him, indeed, when he did not vex her
with any other advances, and she was quite content to enjoy
his Mayflowers.
Old Lady Lloyd heard all the gossip about it from the egg
pedlar, and listened to him with laughter glimmering far down
in her eyes. The egg pedlar went away and vowed he'd never
seen the Old Lady so spry as she was this spring; she seemed
real interested in the young folk's doings.
The Old Lady kept her secret and grew young in it. She walked
back to the Mayflower hill as long as the Mayflowers lasted;
and she always hid in the spruces to see Sylvia Gray go by.
Every day she loved her more, and yearned after her more
deeply. All the long repressed tenderness of her nature
overflowed to this girl who was unconscious of it. She was
proud of Sylvia's grace and beauty, and sweetness of voice and
laughter. She began to like the Spencer children because they
worshipped Sylvia; she envied Mrs. Spencer because the latter
could minister to Sylvia's needs. Even the egg pedlar seemed a
delightful person because he brought news of Sylvia--her
social popularity, her professional success, the love and
admiration she had won already.
The Old Lady never dreamed of revealing herself to Sylvia.
That, in her poverty, was not to be thought of for a moment.
It would have been very sweet to know her--sweet to have her
come to the old house--sweet to talk to her--to enter into her
life. But it might not be. The Old Lady's pride was still far
stronger than her love. It was the one thing she had never
sacrificed and never--so she believed--could sacrifice.
II. The June Chapter
There were no Mayflowers in June; but now the Old Lady's
garden was full of blossoms and every morning Sylvia found a
bouquet of them by the beech--the perfumed ivory of white
narcissus, the flame of tulips, the fairy branches of
bleeding-heart, the pink-and-snow of little, thorny, single,
sweetbreathed early roses. The Old Lady had no fear of
discovery, for the flowers that grew in her garden grew in
every other Spencervale garden as well, including the Stewart
garden. Chris Stewart, when he was teased about the music
teacher, merely smiled and held his peace. Chris knew
perfectly well who was the real giver of those flowers. He had
made it his business to find out when the Mayflower gossip
started. But since it was evident Old Lady Lloyd did not wish
it to be known, Chris told no one. Chris had always liked Old
Lady Lloyd ever since the day, ten years before, when she had
found him crying in the woods with a cut foot and had taken
him into her house, and bathed and bound the wound, and given
him ten cents to buy candy at the store. The Old Lady went
without supper that night because of it, but Chris never knew
that.
The Old Lady thought it a most beautiful June. She no longer
hated the new days; on the contrary, she welcomed them.
"Every day is an uncommon day now," she said jubilantly to
herself--for did not almost every day bring her a glimpse of
Sylvia? Even on rainy days the Old Lady gallantly braved
rheumatism to hide behind her clump of dripping spruces and
watch Sylvia pass. The only days she could not see her were
Sundays; and no Sundays had ever seemed so long to Old Lady
Lloyd as those June Sundays did.
One day the egg pedlar had news for her.
"The music teacher is going to sing a solo for a collection
piece to-morrow," he told her.
The Old Lady's black eyes flashed with interest.
"I didn't know Miss Gray was a member of the choir," she said.
"Jined two Sundays ago. I tell you, our music is something
worth listening to now. The church'll be packed to-morrow, I
reckon--her name's gone all over the country for singing. You
ought to come and hear it, Miss Lloyd."
The pedlar said this out of bravado, merely to show he wasn't
scared of the Old Lady, for all her grand airs. The Old Lady
made no answer, and he thought he had offended her. He went
away, wishing he hadn't said it. Had he but known it, the Old
Lady had forgotten the existence of all and any egg pedlars.
He had blotted himself and his insignificance out of her
consciousness by his last sentence. All her thoughts,
feelings, and wishes were submerged in a very whirlpool of
desire to hear Sylvia sing that solo. She went into the house
in a tumult and tried to conquer that desire. She could not do
it, even thought she summoned all her pride to her aid. Pride
said:
"You will have to go to church to hear her. You haven't fit
clothes to go to church in. Think what a figure you will make
before them all."
But, for the first time, a more insistent voice than pride
spoke to her soul--and, for the first time, the Old Lady
listened to it. It was too true that she had never gone to
church since the day on which she had to begin wearing her
mother's silk dresses. The Old Lady herself thought that this
was very wicked; and she tried to atone by keeping Sunday very
strictly, and always having a little service of her own,
morning and evening. She sang three hymns in her cracked
voice, prayed aloud, and read a sermon. But she could not
bring herself to go to church in her out-of-date clothes--she,
who had once set the fashions in Spencervale, and the longer
she stayed away, the more impossible it seemed that she should
ever again go. Now the impossible had become, not only
possible, but insistent. She must go to church and hear Sylvia
sing, no matter how ridiculous she appeared, no matter how
people talked and laughed at her.
Spencervale congregation had a mild sensation the next
afternoon. Just before the opening of service Old Lady Lloyd
walked up the aisle and sat down in the long-unoccupied Lloyd
pew, in front of the pulpit.
The Old Lady's very soul was writhing within her. She recalled
the reflection she had seen in her mirror before she left--the
old black silk in the mode of thirty years agone and the queer
little bonnet of shirred black satin. She thought how absurd
she must look in the eyes of her world.
As a matter of fact, she did not look in the least absurd.
Some women might have; but the Old Lady's stately distinction
of carriage and figure was so subtly commanding that it did
away with the consideration of garmenting altogether.
The Old Lady did not know this. But she did know that Mrs.
Kimball, the storekeeper's wife, presently rustled into the
next pew in the very latest fashion of fabric and mode; she
and Mrs. Kimball were the same age, and there had been a time
when the latter had been content to imitate Margaret Lloyd's
costumes at a humble distance. But the storekeeper had
proposed, and things were changed now; and there sat poor Old
Lady Lloyd, feeling the change bitterly, and half wishing she
had not come to church at all.
Then all at once the Angel of Love touched there foolish
thoughts, born of vanity and morbid pride, and they melted
away as if they had never been. Sylvia Gray had come into the
choir, and was sitting just where the afternoon sunshine fell
over her beautiful hair like a halo. The Old Lady looked at
her in a rapture of satisfied longing and thenceforth the
service was blessed to her, as anything is blessed which comes
through the medium of unselfish love, whether human or divine.
Nay, are they not one and the same, differing in degree only,
not in kind?
The Old Lady had never had such a good, satisfying look at
Sylvia before. All her former glimpses had been stolen and
fleeting. Now she sat and gazed upon her to her hungry heart's
content, lingering delightedly over every little charm and
loveliness--the way Sylvia's shining hair rippled back from
her forehead, the sweet little trick she had of dropping
quickly her long-lashed eyelids when she encountered too bold
or curious a glance, and the slender, beautifully modelled
hands--so like Leslie Gray's hands--that held her hymn book.
She was dressed very plainly in a black skirt and a white
shirtwaist; but none of the other girls in the choir, with all
their fine feathers, could hold a candle to her--as the egg
pedlar said to his wife, going home from church.
The Old Lady listened to the opening hymns with keen pleasure.
Sylvia's voice thrilled through and dominated them all. But
when the ushers got up to take the collection, an undercurrent
of subdued excitement flowed over the congregation. Sylvia
rose and came forward to Janet Moore's side at the organ. The
next moment her beautiful voice soared through the building
like the very soul of melody--true, clear, powerful, sweet.
Nobody in Spencervale had ever listened to such a voice,
except Old Lady Lloyd herself, who, in her youth, had heard
enough good singing to enable her to be a tolerable judge of
it. She realized instantly that this girl of her heart had a
great gift--a gift that would some day bring her fame and
fortune, if it could be duly trained and developed.
"Oh, I'm so glad I came to church," thought Old Lady Lloyd.
When the solo was ended, the Old Lady's conscience compelled
her to drag her eyes and thoughts from Sylvia, and fasten them
on the minister, who had been flattering himself all through
the opening portion of the service that Old Lady Lloyd had
come to church on his account. He was newly settled, having
been in charge of the Spencervale congregation only a few
months; he was a clever little fellow and he honestly thought
it was the fame of his preaching that had brought Old Lady
Lloyd out to church.
When the service was over all the Old Lady's neighbours came
to speak to her, with kindly smile and handshake. They thought
they ought to encourage her, now that she had made a start in
the right direction; the Old Lady liked their cordiality, and
liked it none the less because she detected in it the same
unconscious respect and deference she had been wont to receive
in the old days--a respect and deference which her personality
compelled from all who approached her. The Old Lady was
surprised to find that she could command it still, in defiance
of unfashionable bonnet and ancient attire.
Janet Moore and Sylvia Gray walked home from church together.
"Did you see Old Lady Lloyd out to-day?" asked Janet. "I was
amazed when she walked in. She has never been to church in my
recollection. What a quaint old figure she is! She's very
rich, you know, but she wears her mother's old clothes and
never gets a new thing. Some people think she is mean; but,"
concluded Janet charitably, "I believe it is simply
eccentricity."
"I felt that was Miss Lloyd as soon as I saw her, although I
had never seen her before," said Sylvia dreamily. "I have been
wishing to see her--for a certain reason. She has a very
striking face. I should like to meet her--to know her."
"I don't think it's likely you ever will," said Janet
carelessly. "She doesn't like young people and she never goes
anywhere. I don't think I'd like to know her. I'd be afraid of
her--she has such stately ways and such strange, piercing
eyes."
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15