Chronicles of Avonlea
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Lucy Maud Montgomery >> Chronicles of Avonlea
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"_I_ shouldn't be afraid of her," said Sylvia to herself, as
she turned into the Spencer lane. "But I don't expect I'll
ever become acquainted with her. If she knew who I am I
suppose she would dislike me. I suppose she never suspects
that I am Leslie Gray's daughter."
The minister, thinking it well to strike while the iron was
hot, went up to call on Old Lady Lloyd the very next
afternoon. He went in fear and trembling, for he had heard
things about Old Lady Lloyd; but she made herself so agreeable
in her high-bred fashion that he was delighted, and told his
wife when he went home that Spencervale people didn't
understand Miss Lloyd. This was perfectly true; but it is by
no means certain that the minister understood her either.
He made only one mistake in tact, but, as the Old Lady did not
snub him for it, he never knew he made it. When he was leaving
he said, "I hope we shall see you at church next Sunday, Miss
Lloyd."
"Indeed, you will," said the Old Lady emphatically.
III. The July Chapter
The first day of July Sylvia found a little birch bark boat
full of strawberries at the beech in the hollow. They were the
earliest of the season; the Old Lady had found them in one of
her secret haunts. They would have been a toothsome addition
to the Old Lady's own slender bill of fare; but she never
thought of eating them. She got far more pleasure out of the
thought of Sylvia's enjoying them for her tea. Thereafter the
strawberries alternated with the flowers as long as they
lasted, and then came blueberries and raspberries. The
blueberries grew far away and the Old Lady had many a tramp
after them. Sometimes her bones ached at night because of it;
but what cared the Old Lady for that? Bone ache is easier to
endure than soul ache; and the Old Lady's soul had stopped
aching for the first time in many year. It was being nourished
with heavenly manna.
One evening Crooked Jack came up to fix something that had
gone wrong with the Old Lady's well. The Old Lady wandered
affably out to him; for she knew he had been working at the
Spencers' all day, and there might be crumbs of information
about Sylvia to be picked up.
"I reckon the music teacher's feeling pretty blue this
evening," Crooked Jack remarked, after straining the Old
Lady's patience to the last verge of human endurance by
expatiating on William Spencer's new pump, and Mrs. Spencer's
new washing-machine, and Amelia Spencer's new young man.
"Why?" asked the Old Lady, turning very pale. Had anything
happened to Sylvia?
"Well, she's been invited to a big party at Mrs. Moore's
brother's in town, and she hasn't got a dress to go in," said
Crooked Jack. "They're great swells and everybody will be got
up regardless. Mrs. Spencer was telling me about it. She says
Miss Gray can't afford a new dress because she's helping to
pay her aunt's doctor's bills. She says she's sure Miss Gray
feels awful disappointed over it, though she doesn't let on.
But Mrs. Spencer says she knows she was crying after she went
to bed last night."
The Old Lady turned and went into the house abruptly. This was
dreadful. Sylvia must go to that party--she MUST. But how
was it to be managed? Through the Old Lady's brain passed wild
thoughts of her mother's silk dresses. But none of them would
be suitable, even if there were time to make one over. Never
had the Old Lady so bitterly regretted her vanished wealth.
"I've only two dollars in the house," she said, "and I've got
to live on that till the next day the egg pedlar comes round.
Is there anything I can sell--ANYTHING? Yes, yes, the grape jug!"
Up to this time, the Old Lady would as soon have thought of
trying to sell her head as the grape jug. The grape jug was
two hundred years old and had been in the Lloyd family ever
since it was a jug at all. It was a big, pot-bellied affair,
festooned with pink-gilt grapes, and with a verse of poetry
printed on one side, and it had been given as a wedding
present to the Old Lady's great-grandmother. As long as the
Old Lady could remember it had sat on the top shelf in the
cupboard in the sitting-room wall, far too precious ever to be
used.
Two years before, a woman who collected old china had explored
Spencervale, and, getting word of the grape jug, had boldly
invaded the old Lloyd place and offered to buy it. She never,
to her dying day, forgot the reception the Old Lady gave her;
but, being wise in her day and generation, she left her card,
saying that if Miss Lloyd ever changed her mind about selling
the jug, she would find that she, the aforesaid collector, had
not changed hers about buying it. People who make a hobby of
heirloom china must meekly overlook snubs, and this particular
person had never seen anything she coveted so much as that
grape jug.
The Old Lady had torn the card to pieces; but she remembered
the name and address. She went to the cupboard and took down
the beloved jug.
"I never thought to part with it," she said wistfully, "but
Sylvia must have a dress, and there is no other way. And,
after all, when I'm gone, who would there be to have it?
Strangers would get it then--it might as well go to them now.
I'll have to go to town to-morrow morning, for there's no time
to lose if the party is Friday night. I haven't been to town
for ten years. I dread the thought of going, more than parting
with the jug. But for Sylvia's sake!"
It was all over Spencervale by the next morning that Old Lady
Lloyd had gone to town, carrying a carefully guarded box.
Everybody wondered why she went; most people supposed she had
become too frightened to keep her money in a black box below
her bed, when there had been two burglaries over at Carmody,
and had taken it to the bank.
The Old Lady sought out the address of the china collector,
trembling with fear that she might be dead or gone. But the
collector was there, very much alive, and as keenly anxious to
possess the grape jug as ever. The Old Lady, pallid with the
pain of her trampled pride, sold the grape jug and went away,
believing that her great-grandmother must have turned over in
her grave at the moment of the transaction. Old Lady Lloyd
felt like a traitor to her traditions.
But she went unflinchingly to a big store and, guided by that
special Providence which looks after simple-minded old souls
in their dangerous excursions into the world, found a
sympathetic clerk who knew just what she wanted and got it for
her. The Old Lady selected a very dainty muslin gown, with
gloves and slippers in keeping; and she ordered it sent at
once, expressage prepaid, to Miss Sylvia Gray, in care of
William Spencer, Spencervale.
Then she paid down the money--the whole price of the jug,
minus a dollar and a half for railroad fare--with a grand,
careless air and departed. As she marched erectly down the
aisle of the store, she encountered a sleek, portly,
prosperous man coming in. As their eyes met, the man started
and his bland face flushed crimson; he lifted his hat and
bowed confusedly. But the Old Lady looked through him as if he
wasn't there, and passed on with not a sign of recognition
about her. He took one step after her, then stopped and turned
away, with a rather disagreeable smile and a shrug of his
shoulders.
Nobody would have guessed, as the Old Lady swept out, how her
heart was seething with abhorrence and scorn. She would not
have had the courage to come to town, even for Sylvia's sake,
if she had thought she would meet Andrew Cameron. The mere
sight of him opened up anew a sealed fountain of bitterness in
her soul; but the thought of Sylvia somehow stemmed the
torrent, and presently the Old Lady was smiling rather
triumphantly, thinking rightly that she had come off best in
that unwelcome encounter. SHE, at any rate, had not faltered
and coloured, and lost her presence of mind.
"It is little wonder HE did," thought the Old Lady
vindictively. It pleased her that Andrew Cameron should lose,
before her, the front of adamant he presented to the world. He
was her cousin and the only living creature Old Lady Lloyd
hated, and she hated and despised him with all the intensity
of her intense nature. She and hers had sustained grievous
wrong at his hands, and the Old Lady was convinced that she
would rather die than take any notice of his existence.
Presently, she resolutely put Andrew Cameron out of her mind.
It was desecration to think of him and Sylvia together. When
she laid her weary head on her pillow that night she was so
happy that even the thought of the vacant shelf in the room
below, where the grape jug had always been, gave her only a
momentary pang.
"It's sweet to sacrifice for one we love--it's sweet to have
someone to sacrifice for," thought the Old Lady.
Desire grows by what it feeds on. The Old Lady thought she was
content; but Friday evening came and found her in a perfect
fever to see Sylvia in her party dress. It was not enough to
fancy her in it; nothing would do the Old Lady but seeing her.
"And I SHALL see her," said the Old Lady resolutely, looking
out from her window at Sylvia's light gleaming through the
firs. She wrapped herself in a dark shawl and crept out,
slipping down to the hollow and up the wood lane. It was a
misty, moonlight night, and a wind, fragrant with the aroma of
clover fields, blew down the lane to meet her.
"I wish I could take your perfume--the soul of you--and pour
it into her life," said the Old Lady aloud to that wind.
Sylvia Gray was standing in her room, ready for the party.
Before her stood Mrs. Spencer and Amelia Spencer and all the
little Spencer girls, in an admiring semi-circle. There was
another spectator. Outside, under the lilac bush, Old Lady
Lloyd was standing. She could see Sylvia plainly, in her
dainty dress, with the pale pink roses Old Lady Lloyd had left
at the beech that day for her in her hair. Pink as they were,
they were not so pink as her cheeks, and her eyes shone like
stars. Amelia Spencer put up her hand to push back a rose that
had fallen a little out of place, and the Old Lady envied her
fiercely.
"That dress couldn't have fitted better if it had been made
for you," said Mrs. Spencer admiringly. "Ain't she lovely,
Amelia? Who COULD have sent it?"
"Oh, I feel sure that Mrs. Moore was the fairy godmother,"
said Sylvia. "There is nobody else who would. It was dear of
her--she knew I wished so much to go to the party with Janet.
I wish Aunty could see me now." Sylvia gave a little sigh in
spite of her joy. "There's nobody else to care very much."
Ah, Sylvia, you were wrong! There was somebody else--somebody
who cared very much--an Old Lady, with eager, devouring eyes,
who was standing under the lilac bush and who presently stole
away through the moonlit orchard to the woods like a shadow,
going home with a vision of you in your girlish beauty to
companion her through the watches of that summer night.
IV. The August Chapter
One day the minister's wife rushed in where Spencervale people
had feared to tread, went boldly to Old Lady Lloyd, and asked
her if she wouldn't come to their Sewing Circle, which met
fortnightly on Saturday afternoons.
"We are filling a box to send to our Trinidad missionary,"
said the minister's wife, "and we should be so pleased to have
you come, Miss Lloyd."
The Old Lady was on the point of refusing rather haughtily.
Not that she was opposed to missions--or sewing circles
either--quite the contrary, but she knew that each member of
the Circle was expected to pay ten cents a week for the
purpose of procuring sewing materials; and the poor Old Lady
really did not see how she could afford it. But a sudden
thought checked her refusal before it reached her lips.
"I suppose some of the young girls go to the Circle?" she said
craftily.
"Oh, they all go," said the minister's wife. "Janet Moore and
Miss Gray are our most enthusiastic members. It is very lovely
of Miss Gray to give her Saturday afternoons--the only ones
she has free from pupils--to our work. But she really has the
sweetest disposition."
"I'll join your Circle," said the Old Lady promptly. She was
determined she would do it, if she had to live on two meals a
day to save the necessary fee.
She went to the Sewing Circle at James Martin's the next
Saturday, and did the most beautiful hand sewing for them. She
was so expert at it that she didn't need to think about it at
all, which was rather fortunate, for all her thoughts were
taken up with Sylvia, who sat in the opposite corner with
Janet Moore, her graceful hands busy with a little boy's
coarse gingham shirt. Nobody thought of introducing Sylvia to
Old Lady Lloyd, and the Old Lady was glad of it. She sewed
finely away, and listened with all her ears to the girlish
chatter which went on in the opposite corner. One thing she
found out--Sylvia's birthday was the twentieth of August. And
the Old Lady was straightway fired with a consuming wish to
give Sylvia a birthday present. She lay awake most of the
night wondering if she could do it, and most sorrowfully
concluded that it was utterly out of the question, no matter
how she might pinch and contrive. Old Lady Lloyd worried quite
absurdly over this, and it haunted her like a spectre until
the next Sewing Circle day.
It met at Mrs. Moore's and Mrs. Moore was especially gracious
to Old Lady Lloyd, and insisted on her taking the wicker
rocker in the parlour. The Old Lady would rather have been in
the sitting-room with the young girls, but she submitted for
courtesy's sake--and she had her reward. Her chair was just
behind the parlour door, and presently Janet Moore and Sylvia
Gray came and sat on the stairs in the hall outside, where a
cool breeze blew in through the maples before the front door.
They were talking of their favourite poets. Janet, it
appeared, adored Byron and Scott. Sylvia leaned to Tennyson
and Browning.
"Do you know," said Sylvia softly, "my father was a poet? He
published a little volume of verse once; and, Janet, I've
never seen a copy of it, and oh, how I would love to! It was
published when he was at college--just a small, private
edition to give his friends. He never published any more--poor
father! I think life disappointed him. But I have such a
longing to see that little book of his verse. I haven't a
scrap of his writings. If I had it would seem as if I
possessed something of him--of his heart, his soul, his inner
life. He would be something more than a mere name to me."
"Didn't he have a copy of his own--didn't your mother have
one?" asked Janet.
"Mother hadn't. She died when I was born, you know, but Aunty
says there was no copy of father's poems among mother's books.
Mother didn't care for poetry, Aunty says--Aunty doesn't
either. Father went to Europe after mother died, and he died
there the next year. Nothing that he had with him was ever
sent home to us. He had sold most of his books before he went,
but he gave a few of his favourite ones to Aunty to keep for
me. HIS book wasn't among them. I don't suppose I shall ever
find a copy, but I should be so delighted if I only could."
When the Old Lady got home she took from her top bureau drawer
an inlaid box of sandalwood. It held a little, slim, limp
volume, wrapped in tissue paper--the Old Lady's most treasured
possession. On the fly-leaf was written, "To Margaret, with
the author's love."
The Old Lady turned the yellow leaves with trembling fingers
and, through eyes brimming with tears, read the verses,
although she had known them all by heart for years. She meant
to give the book to Sylvia for a birthday present--one of the
most precious gifts ever given, if the value of gifts is
gauged by the measure of self-sacrifice involved. In that
little book was immortal love--old laughter--old tears--old
beauty which had bloomed like a rose years ago, holding still
its sweetness like old rose leaves.
She removed the telltale fly-leaf; and late on the night
before Sylvia's birthday, the Old Lady crept, under cover of
the darkness, through byways and across fields, as if bent on
some nefarious expedition, to the little Spencervale store
where the post-office was kept. She slipped the thin parcel
through the slit in the door, and then stole home again,
feeling a strange sense of loss and loneliness. It was as if
she had given away the last link between herself and her
youth. But she did not regret it. It would give Sylvia
pleasure, and that had come to be the overmastering passion of
the Old Lady's heart.
The next night the light in Sylvia's room burned very late,
and the Old Lady watched it triumphantly, knowing the meaning
of it. Sylvia was reading her father's poems, and the Old Lady
in her darkness read them too, murmuring the lines over and
over to herself. After all, giving away the book had not
mattered so very much. She had the soul of it still--and the
fly-leaf with the name, in Leslie's writing, by which nobody
ever called her now.
The Old Lady was sitting on the Marshall sofa the next Sewing
Circle afternoon when Sylvia Gray came and sat down beside
her. The Old Lady's hands trembled a little, and one side of a
handkerchief, which was afterwards given as a Christmas
present to a little olive-skinned coolie in Trinidad, was not
quite so exquisitely done as the other three sides.
Sylvia at first talked of the Circle, and Mrs. Marshall's
dahlias, and the Old Lady was in the seventh heaven of
delight, though she took care not to show it, and was even a
little more stately and finely mannered than usual. When she
asked Sylvia how she liked living in Spencervale, Sylvia said,
"Very much. Everybody is so kind to me. Besides"--Sylvia
lowered her voice so that nobody but the Old Lady could hear
it--"I have a fairy godmother here who does the most beautiful
and wonderful things for me."
Sylvia, being a girl of fine instincts, did not look at Old
Lady Lloyd as she said this. But she would not have seen
anything if she had looked. The Old Lady was not a Lloyd for
nothing.
"How very interesting," she said, indifferently.
"Isn't it? I am so grateful to her and I have wished so much
she might know how much pleasure she has given me. I have
found lovely flowers and delicious berries on my path all
summer; I feel sure she sent me my party dress. But the
dearest gift came last week on my birthday--a little volume of
my father's poems. I can't express what I felt on receiving
them. But I longed to meet my fairy godmother and thank her."
"Quite a fascinating mystery, isn't it? Have you really no
idea who she is?"
The Old Lady asked this dangerous question with marked
success. She would not have been so successful if she had not
been so sure that Sylvia had no idea of the old romance
between her and Leslie Gray. As it was, she had a comfortable
conviction that she herself was the very last person Sylvia
would be likely to suspect.
Sylvia hesitated for an almost unnoticeable moment. Then she
said, "I haven't tried to find out, because I don't think she
wants me to know. At first, of course, in the matter of the
flowers and dress, I did try to solve the mystery; but, since
I received the book, I became convinced that it was my fairy
godmother who was doing it all, and I have respected her wish
for concealment and always shall. Perhaps some day she will
reveal herself to me. I hope so, at least."
"I wouldn't hope it," said the Old Lady discouragingly. "Fairy
godmothers--at least, in all the fairy tales I ever read--are
somewhat apt to be queer, crochety people, much more agreeable
when wrapped up in mystery than when met face to face."
"I'm convinced that mine is the very opposite, and that the
better I became acquainted with her, the more charming a
personage I should find her," said Sylvia gaily.
Mrs. Marshall came up at this juncture and entreated Miss Gray
to sing for them. Miss Gray consenting sweetly, the Old Lady
was left alone and was rather glad of it. She enjoyed her
conversation with Sylvia much more in thinking it over after
she got home than while it was taking place. When an Old Lady
has a guilty conscience, it is apt to make her nervous and
distract her thoughts from immediate pleasure. She wondered a
little uneasily if Sylvia really did suspect her. Then she
concluded that it was out of the question. Who would suspect a
mean, unsociable Old Lady, who had no friends, and who gave
only five cents to the Sewing Circle when everyone else gave
ten or fifteen, to be a fairy godmother, the donor of
beautiful party dresses, and the recipient of gifts from
romantic, aspiring young poets?
V. The September Chapter
In September the Old Lady looked back on the summer and owned
to herself that it had been a strangely happy one, with
Sundays and Sewing Circle days standing out like golden
punctuation marks in a poem of life. She felt like an utterly
different woman; and other people thought her different also.
The Sewing Circle women found her so pleasant, and even
friendly, that they began to think they had misjudged her, and
that perhaps it was eccentricity after all, and not meanness,
which accounted for her peculiar mode of living. Sylvia Gray
always came and talked to her on Circle afternoons now, and
the Old Lady treasured every word she said in her heart and
repeated them over and over to her lonely self in the watches
of the night.
Sylvia never talked of herself or her plans, unless asked
about them; and the Old Lady's self-consciousness prevented
her from asking any personal questions: so their conversation
kept to the surface of things, and it was not from Sylvia, but
from the minister's wife that the Old Lady finally discovered
what her darling's dearest ambition was.
The minister's wife had dropped in at the old Lloyd place one
evening late in September, when a chilly wind was blowing up
from the northeast and moaning about the eaves of the house,
as if the burden of its lay were "harvest is ended and summer
is gone." The Old Lady had been listening to it, as she
plaited a little basket of sweet grass for Sylvia. She had
walked all the way to Avonlea sand-hills for it the day
before, and she was very tired. And her heart was sad. This
summer, which had so enriched her life, was almost over; and
she knew that Sylvia Gray talked of leaving Spencervale at the
end of October. The Old Lady's heart felt like very lead
within her at the thought, and she almost welcomed the advent
of the minister's wife as a distraction, although she was
desperately afraid that the minister's wife had called to ask
for a subscription for the new vestry carpet, and the Old Lady
simply could not afford to give one cent.
But the minister's wife had merely dropped in on her way home
from the Spencers' and she did not make any embarrassing
requests. Instead, she talked about Sylvia Gray, and her words
fell on the Old Lady's ears like separate pearl notes of
unutterably sweet music. The minister's wife had nothing but
praise for Sylvia--she was so sweet and beautiful and winning.
"And with SUCH a voice," said the minister's wife
enthusiastically, adding with a sigh, "It's such a shame she
can't have it properly trained. She would certainly become a
great singer--competent critics have told her so. But she is
so poor she doesn't think she can ever possibly manage it--
unless she can get one of the Cameron scholarships, as they
are called; and she has very little hope of that, although the
professor of music who taught her has sent her name in."
"What are the Cameron scholarships?" asked the Old Lady.
"Well, I suppose you have heard of Andrew Cameron, the
millionaire?" said the minister's wife, serenely unconscious
that she was causing the very bones of the Old Lady's family
skeleton to jangle in their closet.
Into the Old Lady's white face came a sudden faint stain of
colour, as if a rough hand had struck her cheek.
"Yes, I've heard of him," she said.
"Well, it seems that he had a daughter, who was a very
beautiful girl, and whom he idolized. She had a fine voice,
and he was going to send her abroad to have it trained. And
she died. It nearly broke his heart, I understand. But ever
since, he sends one young girl away to Europe every year for a
thorough musical education under the best teachers--in memory
of his daughter. He has sent nine or ten already; but I fear
there isn't much chance for Sylvia Gray, and she doesn't think
there is herself."
"Why not?" asked the Old Lady spiritedly. "I am sure that
there can be few voices equal to Miss Gray's."
"Very true. But you see, these so-called scholarships are
private affairs, dependent solely on the whim and choice of
Andrew Cameron himself. Of course, when a girl has friends who
use their influence with him, he will often send her on their
recommendation. They say he sent a girl last year who hadn't
much of a voice at all just because her father had been an old
business crony of his. But Sylvia doesn't know anyone at all
who would, to use a slang term, have any 'pull' with Andrew
Cameron, and she is not acquainted with him herself. Well, I
must be going; we'll see you at the Manse on Saturday, I hope,
Miss Lloyd. The Circle meets there, you know."
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