Chronicles of Avonlea

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"Yes, I know," said the Old Lady absently. When the minister's
wife had gone, she dropped her sweetgrass basket and sat for a
long, long time with her hands lying idly in her lap, and her
big black eyes staring unseeingly at the wall before her.

Old Lady Lloyd, so pitifully poor that she had to eat six
crackers the less a week to pay her fee to the Sewing Circle,
knew that it was in her power--HERS--to send Leslie Gray's
daughter to Europe for her musical education! If she chose to
use her "pull" with Andrew Cameron--if she went to him and
asked him to send Sylvia Gray abroad the next year--she had no
doubt whatever that it would be done. It all lay with her--if-
-if--IF she could so far crush and conquer her pride as to
stoop to ask a favour of the man who had wronged her and hers
so bitterly.

Years ago, her father, acting under the advice and urgency of
Andrew Cameron, had invested all his little fortune in an
enterprise that had turned out a failure. Abraham Lloyd lost
every dollar he possessed, and his family were reduced to
utter poverty. Andrew Cameron might have been forgiven for a
mistake; but there was a strong suspicion, amounting to almost
certainty, that he had been guilty of something far worse than
a mistake in regard to his uncle's investment. Nothing could
be legally proved; but it was certain that Andrew Cameron,
already noted for his "sharp practices," emerged with improved
finances from an entanglement that had ruined many better men;
and old Doctor Lloyd had died brokenhearted, believing that
his nephew had deliberately victimized him.

Andrew Cameron had not quite done this; he had meant well
enough by his uncle at first, and what he had finally done he
tried to justify to himself by the doctrine that a man must
look out for Number One.

Margaret Lloyd made no such excuses for him; she held him
responsible, not only for her lost fortune, but for her
father's death, and never forgave him for it. When Abraham
Lloyd had died, Andrew Cameron, perhaps pricked by his
conscience, had come to her, sleekly and smoothly, to offer
her financial aid. He would see, he told her, that she never
suffered want.

Margaret Lloyd flung his offer back in his face after a
fashion that left nothing to be desired in the way of plain
speaking. She would die, she told him passionately, before she
would accept a penny or a favour from him. He had preserved an
unbroken show of good temper, expressed his heartfelt regret
that she should cherish such an unjust opinion of him, and had
left her with an oily assurance that he would always be her
friend, and would always be delighted to render her any
assistance in his power whenever she should choose to ask for
it.

The Old Lady had lived for twenty years in the firm conviction
that she would die in the poorhouse--as, indeed, seemed not
unlikely--before she would ask a favour of Andrew Cameron. And
so, in truth, she would have, had it been for herself. But for
Sylvia! Could she so far humble herself for Sylvia's sake?

The question was not easily or speedily settled, as had been
the case in the matters of the grape jug and the book of
poems. For a whole week the Old Lady fought her pride and
bitterness. Sometimes, in the hours of sleepless night, when
all human resentments and rancours seemed petty and
contemptible, she thought she had conquered it. But in the
daytime, with the picture of her father looking down at her
from the wall, and the rustle of her unfashionable dresses,
worn because of Andrew Cameron's double dealing, in her ears,
it got the better of her again.

But the Old Lady's love for Sylvia had grown so strong and
deep and tender that no other feeling could endure finally
against it. Love is a great miracle worker; and never had its
power been more strongly made manifest than on the cold, dull
autumn morning when the Old Lady walked to Bright River
railway station and took the train to Charlottetown, bent on
an errand the very thought of which turned her soul sick
within her. The station master who sold her her ticket thought
Old Lady Lloyd looked uncommonly white and peaked--"as if she
hadn't slept a wink or eaten a bite for a week," he told his
wife at dinner time. "Guess there's something wrong in her
business affairs. This is the second time she's gone to town
this summer."

When the Old Lady reached the town, she ate her slender little
lunch and then walked out to the suburb where the Cameron
factories and warehouses were. It was a long walk for her, but
she could not afford to drive. She felt very tired when she
was shown into the shining, luxurious office where Andrew
Cameron sat at his desk.

After the first startled glance of surprise, he came forward
beamingly, with outstretched hand.

"Why, Cousin Margaret! This is a pleasant surprise. Sit down--
allow me, this is a much more comfortable chair. Did you come
in this morning? And how is everybody out in Spencervale?"

The Old Lady had flushed at his first words. To hear the name
by which her father and mother and lover had called her on
Andrew Cameron's lips seemed like profanation. But, she told
herself, the time was past for squeamishness. If she could ask
a favour of Andrew Cameron, she could bear lesser pangs. For
Sylvia's sake she shook hands with him, for Sylvia's sake she
sat down in the chair he offered. But for no living human
being's sake could this determined Old Lady infuse any
cordiality into her manner or her words. She went straight to
the point with Lloyd simplicity.

"I have come to ask a favour of you," she said, looking him in
the eye, not at all humbly or meekly, as became a suppliant,
but challengingly and defiantly, as if she dared him to
refuse.

"DE-lighted to hear it, Cousin Margaret." Never was anything
so bland and gracious as his tone. "Anything I can do for you
I shall be only too pleased to do. I am afraid you have looked
upon me as an enemy, Margaret, and I assure you I have felt
your injustice keenly. I realize that some appearances were
against me, but--"

The Old Lady lifted her hand and stemmed his eloquence by that
one gesture.

"I did not come here to discuss that matter," she said. "We
will not refer to the past, if you please. I came to ask a
favour, not for myself, but for a very dear young friend of
mine--a Miss Gray, who has a remarkably fine voice which she
wishes to have trained. She is poor, so I came to ask you if
you would give her one of your musical scholarships. I
understand her name has already been suggested to you, with a
recommendation from her teacher. I do not know what he has
said of her voice, but I do know he could hardly overrate it.
If you send her abroad for training, you will not make any
mistake."

The Old Lady stopped talking. She felt sure Andrew Cameron
would grant her request, but she did hope he would grant it
rather rudely or unwillingly. She could accept the favour so
much more easily if it were flung to her like a bone to a dog.
But not a bit of it. Andrew Cameron was suaver than ever.
Nothing could give him greater pleasure than to grant his dear
Cousin Margaret's request--he only wished it involved more
trouble on his part. Her little protege should have her
musical education assuredly--she should go abroad next year--
and he was DE-lighted--

"Thank you," said the Old Lady, cutting him short again. "I am
much obliged to you--and I ask you not to let Miss Gray know
anything of my interference. And I shall not take up any more
of your valuable time. Good afternoon."

"Oh, you mustn't go so soon," he said, with some real kindness
or clannishness permeating the hateful cordiality of his
voice--for Andrew Cameron was not entirely without the homely
virtues of the average man. He had been a good husband and
father; he had once been very fond of his Cousin Margaret; and
he was really very sorry that "circumstances" had "compelled"
him to act as he had done in that old affair of her father's
investment. "You must be my guest to-night."

"Thank you. I must return home to-night," said the Old Lady
firmly, and there was that in her tone which told Andrew
Cameron that it would be useless to urge her. But he insisted
on telephoning for his carriage to drive her to the station.
The Old Lady submitted to this, because she was secretly
afraid her own legs would not suffice to carry her there; she
even shook hands with him at parting, and thanked him a second
time for granting her request.

"Not at all," he said. "Please try to think a little more
kindly of me, Cousin Margaret."

When the Old Lady reached the station she found, to her
dismay, that her train had just gone and that she would have
to wait two hours for the evening one. She went into the
waiting-room and sat down. She was very tired. All the
excitement that had sustained her was gone, and she felt weak
and old. She had nothing to eat, having expected to get home
in time for tea; the waiting-room was chilly, and she shivered
in her thin, old, silk mantilla. Her head ached and her heart
likewise. She had won Sylvia's desire for her; but Sylvia
would go out of her life, and the Old Lady did not see how she
was to go on living after that. Yet she sat there
unflinchingly for two hours, an upright, indomitable old
figure, silently fighting her losing battle with the forces of
physical and mental pain, while happy people came and went,
and laughed and talked before her.

At eight o'clock the Old Lady got off the train at Bright
River station, and slipped off unnoticed into the darkness of
the wet night. She had two miles to walk, and a cold rain was
falling. Soon the Old Lady was wet to the skin and chilled to
the marrow. She felt as if she were walking in a bad dream.
Blind instinct alone guided her over the last mile and up the
lane to her own house. As she fumbled at her door, she
realized that a burning heat had suddenly taken the place of
her chilliness. She stumbled in over her threshold and closed
the door.

VI. The October Chapter

On the second morning after Old Lady Lloyd's journey to town,
Sylvia Gray was walking blithely down the wood lane. It was a
beautiful autumn morning, clear and crisp and sunny; the
frosted ferns, drenched and battered with the rain of
yesterday, gave out a delicious fragrance; here and there in
the woods a maple waved a gay crimson banner, or a branch of
birch showed pale golden against the dark, unchanging spruces.
The air was very pure and exhilarating. Sylvia walked with a
joyous lightness of step and uplift of brow.

At the beech in the hollow she paused for an expectant moment,
but there was nothing among the gray old roots for her. She
was just turning away when little Teddy Kimball, who lived
next door to the manse, came running down the slope from the
direction of the old Lloyd place. Teddy's freckled face was
very pale.

"Oh, Miss Gray!" he gasped. "I guess Old Lady Lloyd has gone
clean crazy at last. The minister's wife asked me to run up to
the Old Lady, with a message about the Sewing Circle--and I
knocked--and knocked--and nobody came--so I thought I'd just
step in and leave the letter on the table. But when I opened
the door, I heard an awful queer laugh in the sitting-room,
and next minute, the Old Lady came to the sitting-room door.
Oh, Miss Gray, she looked awful. Her face was red and her eyes
awful wild--and she was muttering and talking to herself and
laughing like mad. I was so scared I just turned and run."

Sylvia, without stopping for reflection, caught Teddy's hand
and ran up the slope. It did not occur to her to be
frightened, although she thought with Teddy that the poor,
lonely, eccentric Old Lady had really gone out of her mind at
last.

The Old Lady was sitting on the kitchen sofa when Sylvia
entered. Teddy, too frightened to go in, lurked on the step
outside. The Old Lady still wore the damp black silk dress in
which she had walked from the station. Her face was flushed,
her eyes wild, her voice hoarse. But she knew Sylvia and
cowered down.

"Don't look at me," she moaned. "Please go away--I can't bear
that YOU should know how poor I am. You're to go to Europe--
Andrew Cameron is going to send you--I asked him--he couldn't
refuse ME. But please go away."

Sylvia did not go away. At a glance she had seen that this was
sickness and delirium, not insanity. She sent Teddy off in hot
haste for Mrs. Spencer and when Mrs. Spencer came they induced
the Old Lady to go to bed, and sent for the doctor. By night
everybody in Spencervale knew that Old Lady Lloyd had
pneumonia.

Mrs. Spencer announced that she meant to stay and nurse the
Old Lady. Several other women offered assistance. Everybody
was kind and thoughtful. But the Old Lady did not know it. She
did not even know Sylvia Gray, who came and sat by her every
minute she could spare. Sylvia Gray now knew all that she had
suspected--the Old Lady was her fairy godmother. The Old Lady
babbled of Sylvia incessantly, revealing all her love for her,
betraying all the sacrifices she had made. Sylvia's heart
ached with love and tenderness, and she prayed earnestly that
the Old Lady might recover.

"I want her to know that I give her love for love," she
murmured.

Everybody knew now how poor the Old Lady really was. She let
slip all the jealously guarded secrets of her existence,
except her old love for Leslie Gray. Even in delirium
something sealed her lips as to that. But all else came out--
her anguish over her unfashionable attire, her pitiful
makeshifts and contrivances, her humiliation over wearing
unfashionable dresses and paying only five cents where every
other Sewing Circle member paid ten. The kindly women who
waited on her listened to her with tearfilled eyes, and
repented of their harsh judgments in the past.

"But who would have thought it?" said Mrs. Spencer to the
minister's wife. "Nobody ever dreamed that her father had lost
ALL his money, though folks supposed he had lost some in
that old affair of the silver mine out west. It's shocking to
think of the way she has lived all these years, often with not
enough to eat--and going to bed in winter days to save fuel.
Though I suppose if we had known we couldn't have done much
for her, she's so desperate proud. But if she lives, and will
let us help her, things will be different after this. Crooked
Jack says he'll never forgive himself for taking pay for the
few little jobs he did for her. He says, if she'll only let
him, he'll do everything she wants done for her after this for
nothing. Ain't it strange what a fancy she's took to Miss
Gray? Think of her doing all those things for her all summer,
and selling the grape jug and all. Well, the Old Lady
certainly isn't mean, but nobody made a mistake in calling her
queer. It all does seem desperate pitiful. Miss Gray's taking
it awful hard. She seems to think about as much of the Old
Lady as the Old Lady thinks of her. She's so worked up she
don't even seem to care about going to Europe next year. She's
really going--she's had word from Andrew Cameron. I'm awful
glad, for there never was a sweeter girl in the world; but she
says it will cost too much if the Old Lady's life is to pay
for it."

Andrew Cameron heard of the Old Lady's illness and came out to
Spencervale himself. He was not allowed to see the Old Lady,
of course; but he told all concerned that no expense or
trouble was to be spared, and the Spencervale doctor was
instructed to send his bill to Andrew Cameron and hold his
peace about it. Moreover, when Andrew Cameron went back home,
he sent a trained nurse out to wait on the Old Lady, a
capable, kindly woman who contrived to take charge of the case
without offending Mrs. Spencer--than which no higher tribute
could be paid to her tact!

The Old Lady did not die--the Lloyd constitution brought her
through. One day, when Sylvia came in, the Old Lady smiled up
at her, with a weak, faint, sensible smile, and murmured her
name, and the nurse said that the crisis was past.

The Old Lady made a marvellously patient and tractable
invalid. She did just as she was told, and accepted the
presence of the nurse as a matter of course.

But one day, when she was strong enough to talk a little, she
said to Sylvia,

"I suppose Andrew Cameron sent Miss Hayes here, did he?"
"Yes," said Sylvia, rather timidly.

The Old Lady noticed the timidity and smiled, with something
of her old humour and spirit in her black eyes.

"Time has been when I'd have packed off unceremoniously any
person Andrew Cameron sent here," she said. "But, Sylvia, I
have gone through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and I
have left pride and resentment behind me for ever, I hope. I
no longer feel as I felt towards Andrew. I can even accept a
personal favour from him now. At last I can forgive him for
the wrong he did me and mine. Sylvia, I find that I have been
letting no ends of cats out of bags in my illness. Everybody
knows now how poor I am--but I don't seem to mind it a bit.
I'm only sorry that I ever shut my neighbours out of my life
because of my foolish pride. Everyone has been so kind to me,
Sylvia. In the future, if my life is spared, it is going to be
a very different sort of life. I'm going to open it to all the
kindness and companionship I can find in young and old. I'm
going to help them all I can and let them help me. I CAN
help people--I've learned that money isn't the only power for
helping people. Anyone who has sympathy and understanding to
give has a treasure that is without money and without price.
And oh, Sylvia, you've found out what I never meant you to
know. But I don't mind that now, either."

Sylvia took the Old Lady's thin white hand and kissed it.

"I can never thank you enough for what you have done for me,
dearest Miss Lloyd," she said earnestly. "And I am so glad
that all mystery is done away with between us, and I can love
you as much and as openly as I have longed to do. I am so glad
and so thankful that you love me, dear fairy godmother."

"Do you know WHY I love you so?" said the Old Lady
wistfully. "Did I let THAT out in my raving, too?"

"No. but I think I know. It is because I am Leslie Gray's
daughter, isn't it? I know that father loved you--his brother,
Uncle Willis, told me all about it."

"I spoiled my own life because of my wicked pride," said the
Old Lady sadly. "But you will love me in spite of it all,
won't you, Sylvia? And you will come to see me sometimes? And
write me after you go away?"

"I am coming to see you every day," said Sylvia. "I am going
to stay in Spencervale for a whole year yet, just to be near
you. And next year when I go to Europe--thanks to you, fairy
godmother--I'll write you every day. We are going to be the
best of chums, and we are going to have a most beautiful year
of comradeship!"

The Old Lady smiled contentedly. Out in the kitchen, the
minister's wife, who had brought up a dish of jelly, was
talking to Mrs. Spencer about the Sewing Circle. Through the
open window, where the red vines hung, came the pungent, sun-
warm October air. The sunshine fell over Sylvia's chestnut
hair like a crown of glory and youth.

"I do feel so perfectly happy," said the Old Lady, with a
long, rapturous breath.

III. Each In His Own Tongue

The honey-tinted autumn sunshine was falling thickly over the
crimson and amber maples around old Abel Blair's door. There
was only one outer door in old Abel's house, and it almost
always stood wide open. A little black dog, with one ear
missing and a lame forepaw, almost always slept on the worn
red sandstone slab which served old Abel for a doorstep; and
on the still more worn sill above it a large gray cat almost
always slept. Just inside the door, on a bandy-legged chair of
elder days, old Abel almost always sat.

He was sitting there this afternoon--a little old man, sadly
twisted with rheumatism; his head was abnormally large,
thatched with long, wiry black hair; his face was heavily
lined and swarthily sunburned; his eyes were deep-set and
black, with occasional peculiar golden flashes in them. A
strange looking man was old Abel Blair; and as strange was he
as he looked. Lower Carmody people would have told you.

Old Abel was almost always sober in these, his later years. He
was sober to-day. He liked to bask in that ripe sunlight as
well as his dog and cat did; and in such baskings he almost
always looked out of his doorway at the far, fine blue sky
over the tops of the crowding maples. But to-day he was not
looking at the sky, instead, he was staring at the black,
dusty rafters of his kitchen, where hung dried meats and
strings of onions and bunches of herbs and fishing tackle and
guns and skins.

But old Abel saw not these things; his face was the face of a
man who beholds visions, compact of heavenly pleasure and
hellish pain, for old Abel was seeing what he might have been-
-and what he was; as he always saw when Felix Moore played to
him on the violin. And the awful joy of dreaming that he was
young again, with unspoiled life before him, was so great and
compelling that it counterbalanced the agony in the
realization of a dishonoured old age, following years in which
he had squandered the wealth of his soul in ways where Wisdom
lifted not her voice.

Felix Moore was standing opposite to him, before an untidy
stove, where the noon fire had died down into pallid,
scattered ashes. Under his chin he held old Abel's brown,
battered fiddle; his eyes, too, were fixed on the ceiling; and
he, too, saw things not lawful to be uttered in any language
save that of music; and of all music, only that given forth by
the anguished, enraptured spirit of the violin. And yet this
Felix was little more than twelve years old, and his face was
still the face of a child who knows nothing of either sorrow
or sin or failure or remorse. Only in his large, gray-black
eyes was there something not of the child--something that
spoke of an inheritance from many hearts, now ashes, which had
aforetime grieved and joyed, and struggled and failed, and
succeeded and grovelled. The inarticulate cries of their
longings had passed into this child's soul, and transmuted
themselves into the expression of his music.

Felix was a beautiful child. Carmody people, who stayed at
home, thought so; and old Abel Blair, who had roamed afar in
many lands, thought so; and even the Rev. Stephen Leonard, who
taught, and tried to believe, that favour is deceitful and
beauty is vain, thought so.

He was a slight lad, with sloping shoulders, a slim brown
neck, and a head set on it with stag-like grace and uplift.
His hair, cut straight across his brow and falling over his
ears, after some caprice of Janet Andrews, the minister's
housekeeper, was a glossy blue-black. the skin of his face and
hands was like ivory; his eyes were large and beautifully
tinted--gray, with dilating pupils; his features had the
outlines of a cameo. Carmody mothers considered him delicate,
and had long foretold that the minister would never bring him
up; but old Abel pulled his grizzled moustache when he heard
such forebodings and smiled.

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

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

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

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

Felix shook his head.

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

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

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