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

"And I love him," said Felix warmly. "I love him so much that
I'll even try to be a minister for his sake, though I don't
want to be."

"What do you want to be?"

"A great violinist," answered the child, his ivory-hued face
suddenly warming into living rose. "I want to play to
thousands--and see their eyes look as yours do when I play.
Sometimes your eyes frighten me, but oh, it's a splendid
fright! If I had father's violin I could do better. I remember
that he once said it had a soul that was doing purgatory for
its sins when it had lived on earth. I don't know what he
meant, but it did seem to me that HIS violin was alive. He taught
me to play on it as soon as I was big enough to hold it."

"Did you love your father?" asked old Abel, with a keen look.

Again Felix crimsoned; but he looked straightly and steadily
into his old friend's face.

"No," he said, "I didn't; but," he added, gravely and deliberately,
"I don't think you should have asked me such a question."

It was old Abel's turn to blush. Carmody people would not have
believed he could blush; and perhaps no living being could
have called that deepening hue into his weather-beaten cheek
save only this gray-eyed child of the rebuking face.

"No, I guess I shouldn't," he said. "But I'm always making
mistakes. I've never made anything else. That's why I'm
nothing more than 'Old Abel' to the Carmody people. Nobody but
you and your grandfather ever calls me 'Mr. Blair.' Yet
William Blair at the store up there, rich and respected as he
is, wasn't half as clever a man as I was when we started in
life: you mayn't believe that, but it's true. And the worst of
it is, young Felix, that most of the time I don't care whether
I'm Mr. Blair of old Abel. Only when you play I care. It makes
me feel just as a look I saw in a little girl's eyes some
years ago made me feel. Her name was Anne Shirley and she
lived with the Cuthberts down at Avonlea. We got into a
conversation at Blair's store. She could talk a blue streak to
anyone, that girl could. I happened to say about something
that it didn't matter to a battered old hulk of sixty odd like
me. She looked at me with her big, innocent eyes, a little
reproachful like, as if I'd said something awful heretical.
'Don't you think, Mr. Blair,' she says, 'that the older we get
the more things ought to matter to us?'--as grave as if she'd
been a hundred instead of eleven. 'Things matter SO much to
me now,' she says, clasping her hands thisaway, 'and I'm sure
that when I'm sixty they'll matter just five times as much to
me.' Well, the way she looked and the way she spoke made me
feel downright ashamed of myself because things had stopped
mattering with me. But never mind all that. My miserable old
feelings don't count for much. What come of your father's fiddle?"

"Grandfather took it away when I came here. I think he burned
it. And I long for it so often."

"Well, you've always got my old brown fiddle to come to when
you must."

"Yes, I know. And I'm glad for that. But I'm hungry for a
violin all the time. And I only come here when the hunger gets
too much to bear. I feel as if I oughtn't to come even then--
I'm always saying I won't do it again, because I know
grandfather wouldn't like it, if he knew."

"He has never forbidden it, has he?"

"No, but that is because he doesn't know I come here for that.
He never thinks of such a thing. I feel sure he WOULD forbid
it, if he knew. And that makes me very wretched. And yet I
HAVE to come. Mr. Blair, do you know why grandfather can't
bear to have me play on the violin? He loves music, and he
doesn't mind my playing on the organ, if I don't neglect other
things. I can't understand it, can you?"

"I have a pretty good idea, but I can't tell you. It isn't my
secret. Maybe he'll tell you himself some day. But, mark you,
young Felix, he has got good reasons for it all. Knowing what
I know, I can't blame him over much, though I think he's
mistaken. Come now, play something more for me before you go--
something that's bright and happy this time, so as to leave me
with a good taste in my mouth. That last thing you played took
me straight to heaven,--but heaven's awful near to hell, and
at the last you tipped me in."

"I don't understand you," said Felix, drawing his fine, narrow
black brows together in a perplexed frown.

"No--and I wouldn't want you to. You couldn't understand
unless you was an old man who had it in him once to do
something and be a MAN, and just went and made himself a
devilish fool. But there must be something in you that
understands things--all kinds of things--or you couldn't put
it all into music the way you do. How do you do it? How in--
how DO you do it, young Felix?"

"I don't know. But I play differently to different people. I
don't know how that is. When I'm alone with you I have to play
one way; and when Janet comes over here to listen I feel quite
another way--not so thrilling, but happier and lonelier. And
that day when Jessie Blair was here listening I felt as if I
wanted to laugh and sing--as if the violin wanted to laugh and
sing all the time."

The strange, golden gleam flashed through old Abel's sunken
eyes.

"God," he muttered under his breath, "I believe the boy can
get into other folk's souls somehow, and play out what HIS
soul sees there."

"What's that you say?" inquired Felix, petting his fiddle.

"Nothing--never mind--go on. Something lively now, young
Felix. Stop probing into my soul, where you haven't no
business to be, you infant, and play me something out of your
own--something sweet and happy and pure."

"I'll play the way I feel on sunshiny mornings, when the birds
are singing and I forget I have to be a minister," said Felix
simply.

A witching, gurgling, mirthful strain, like mingled bird and
brook song, floated out on the still air, along the path where
the red and golden maple leaves were falling very softly, one
by one. The Reverend Stephen Leonard heard it, as he came
along the way, and the Reverend Stephen Leonard smiled. Now,
when Stephen Leonard smiled, children ran to him, and grown
people felt as if they looked from Pisgah over to some fair
land of promise beyond the fret and worry of their care-dimmed
earthly lives.

Mr. Leonard loved music, as he loved all things beautiful,
whether in the material or the spiritual world, though he did
not realize how much he loved them for their beauty alone, or
he would have been shocked and remorseful. He himself was
beautiful. His figure was erect and youthful, despite seventy
years. His face was as mobile and charming as a woman's, yet
with all a man's tried strength and firmness in it, and his
dark blue eyes flashed with the brilliance of one and twenty;
even his silken silvery hair could not make an old man of him.
He was worshipped by everyone who knew him, and he was, in so
far as mortal man may be, worthy of that worship.

"Old Abel is amusing himself with his violin again," he
thought. "What a delicious thing he is playing! He has quite a
gift for the violin. But how can he play such a thing as
that,--a battered old hulk of a man who has, at one time or
another, wallowed in almost every sin to which human nature
can sink? He was on one of his sprees three days ago--the
first one for over a year--lying dead-drunk in the market
square in Charlottetown among the dogs; and now he is playing
something that only a young archangel on the hills of heaven
ought to be able to play. Well, it will make my task all the
easier. Abel is always repentant by the time he is able to
play on his fiddle."

Mr. Leonard was on the door-stone. The little black dog had
frisked down to meet him, and the gray cat rubbed her head
against his leg. Old Abel did not notice him; he was beating
time with uplifted hand and smiling face to Felix's music, and
his eyes were young again, glowing with laughter and sheer
happiness.

"Felix! what does this mean?"

The violin bow clattered from Felix's hand upon the floor; he
swung around and faced his grandfather. As he met the passion
of grief and hurt in the old man's eyes, his own clouded with
an agony of repentance.

"Grandfather--I'm sorry," he cried brokenly.

"Now, now!" Old Abel had risen deprecatingly. "It's all my
fault, Mr. Leonard. Don't you blame the boy. I coaxed him to
play a bit for me. I didn't feel fit to touch the fiddle yet
myself--too soon after Friday, you see. So I coaxed him on--
wouldn't give him no peace till he played. It's all my fault."

"No," said Felix, throwing back his head. His face was as
white as marble, yet it seemed ablaze with desperate truth and
scorn of old Abel's shielding lie. "No, grandfather, it isn't
Abel's fault. I came over here on purpose to play, because I
thought you had gone to the harbour. I have come here often,
ever since I have lived with you."

"Ever since you have lived with me you have been deceiving me
like this, Felix?"

There was no anger in Mr. Leonard's tone--only measureless
sorrow. The boy's sensitive lips quivered.

"Forgive me, grandfather," he whispered beseechingly.

"You never forbid him to come," old Abel broke in angrily. "Be
just, Mr. Leonard--be just."

"I AM just. Felix knows that he has disobeyed me, in the
spirit if not in the letter. Do you not know it, Felix?"

"Yes, grandfather, I have done wrong--I've known that I was
doing wrong every time I came. Forgive me, grandfather."

"Felix, I forgive you, but I ask you to promise me, here and
now, that you will never again, as long as you live, touch a
violin."
Dusky crimson rushed madly over the boy's face. He gave a cry
as if he had been lashed with a whip. Old Abel sprang to his
feet.

"Don't you ask such a promise of him, Mr. Leonard," he cried
furiously. "It's a sin, that's what it is. Man, man, what
blinds you? You ARE blind. Can't you see what is in the boy?
His soul is full of music. It'll torture him to death--or to
worse--if you don't let it have way."

"There is a devil in such music," said Mr. Leonard hotly.

"Ay, there may be, but don't forget that there's a Christ in
it, too," retorted old Abel in a low tense tone.

Mr. Leonard looked shocked; he considered that old Abel had
uttered blasphemy. He turned away from him rebukingly.

"Felix, promise me."

There was no relenting in his face or tone. He was merciless
in the use of the power he possessed over that young, loving
spirit. Felix understood that there was no escape; but his
lips were very white as he said,

"I promise, grandfather."

Mr. Leonard drew a long breath of relief. He knew that promise
would be kept. So did old Abel. The latter crossed the floor
and sullenly took the violin from Felix's relaxed hand.
Without a word or look he went into the little bedroom off the
kitchen and shut the door with a slam of righteous
indignation. But from its window he stealthily watched his
visitors go away. Just as they entered on the maple path Mr.
Leonard laid his hand on Felix's head and looked down at him.
Instantly the boy flung his arm up over the old man's shoulder
and smiled at him. In the look they exchanged there was
boundless love and trust--ay, and good-fellowship. Old Abel's
scornful eyes again held the golden flash.

"How those two love each other!" he muttered enviously. "And
how they torture each other!"

Mr. Leonard went to his study to pray when he got home. He
knew that Felix had run for comforting to Janet Andrews, the
little, thin, sweet-faced, rigid-lipped woman who kept house
for them. Mr. Leonard knew that Janet would disapprove of his
action as deeply as old Abel had done. She would say nothing,
she would only look at him with reproachful eyes over the
teacups at suppertime. But Mr. Leonard believed he had done
what was best and his conscience did not trouble him, though
his heart did.

Thirteen years before this, his daughter Margaret had almost
broken that heart by marrying a man of whom he could not
approve. Martin Moore was a professional violinist. He was a
popular performer, though not in any sense a great one. He met
the slim, golden-haired daughter of the manse at the house of
a college friend she was visiting in Toronto, and fell
straightway in love with her. Margaret had loved him with all
her virginal heart in return, and married him, despite her
father's disapproval. It was not to Martin Moore's profession
that Mr. Leonard objected, but to the man himself. He knew
that the violinist's past life had not been such as became a
suitor for Margaret Leonard; and his insight into character
warned him that Martin Moore could never make any woman
lastingly happy.

Margaret Leonard did not believe this. She married Martin
Moore and lived one year in paradise. Perhaps that atoned for
the three bitter years which followed--that, and her child. At
all events, she died as she had lived, loyal and
uncomplaining. She died alone, for her husband was away on a
concert tour, and her illness was so brief that her father had
not time to reach her before the end. Her body was taken home
to be buried beside her mother in the little Carmody
churchyard. Mr. Leonard wished to take the child, but Martin
Moore refused to give him up.

Six years later Moore, too, died, and at last Mr. Leonard had
his heart's desire--the possession of Margaret's son. The
grandfather awaited the child's coming with mingled feelings.
His heart yearned for him, yet he dreaded to meet a second
edition of Martin Moore. Suppose Margaret's son resembled his
handsome vagabond of a father! Or, worse still, suppose he
were cursed with his father's lack of principle, his
instability, his Bohemian instincts. Thus Mr. Leonard tortured
himself wretchedly before the coming of Felix.

The child did not look like either father or mother. Instead,
Mr. Leonard found himself looking into a face which he had put
away under the grasses thirty years before--the face of his
girl bride, who had died at Margaret's birth. Here again were
her lustrous gray-black eyes, her ivory outlines, her fine-
traced arch of brow; and here, looking out of those eyes,
seemed her very spirit again. From that moment the soul of the
old man was knit to the soul of the child, and they loved each
other with a love surpassing that of women.

Felix's only inheritance from his father was his love of
music. But the child had genius, where his father had
possessed only talent. To Martin Moore's outward mastery of
the violin was added the mystery and intensity of his mother's
nature, with some more subtle quality still, which had perhaps
come to him from the grandmother he so strongly resembled.
Moore had understood what a career was naturally before the
child, and he had trained him in the technique of his art from
the time the slight fingers could first grasp the bow. When
nine-year-old Felix came to the Carmody manse, he had mastered
as much of the science of the violin as nine out of ten
musicians acquire in a lifetime; and he brought with him his
father's violin; it was all Martin Moore had to leave his son-
-but it was an Amati, the commercial value of which nobody in
Carmody suspected. Mr. Leonard had taken possession of it and
Felix had never seen it since. He cried himself to sleep many
a night for the loss of it. Mr. Leonard did not know this, and
if Janet Andrews suspected it she held her tongue--an art in
which she excelled. She "saw no harm in a fiddle," herself,
and thought Mr. Leonard absurdly strict in the matter, though
it would not have been well for the luckless outsider who
might have ventured to say as much to her. She had connived at
Felix's visits to old Abel Blair, squaring the matter with her
Presbyterian conscience by some peculiar process known only to
herself.

When Janet heard of the promise which Mr. Leonard had exacted
from Felix she seethed with indignation; and, though she "knew
her place" better than to say anything to Mr. Leonard about
it, she made her disapproval so plainly manifest in her
bearing that the stern, gentle old man found the atmosphere of
his hitherto peaceful manse unpleasantly chill and hostile for
a time.

It was the wish of his heart that Felix should be a minister,
as he would have wished his own son to be, had one been born
to him. Mr. Leonard thought rightly that the highest work to
which any man could be called was a life of service to his
fellows; but he made the mistake of supposing the field of
service much narrower than it is--of failing to see that a man
may minister to the needs of humanity in many different but
equally effective ways.

Janet hoped that Mr. Leonard might not exact the fulfilment of
Felix's promise; but Felix himself, with the instinctive
understanding of perfect love, knew that it was vain to hope
for any change of viewpoint in his grandfather. He addressed
himself to the keeping of his promise in letter and in spirit.
He never went again to old Abel's; he did not even play on the
organ, though this was not forbidden, because any music
wakened in him a passion of longing and ecstasy which demanded
expression with an intensity not to be borne. He flung himself
grimly into his studies and conned Latin and Greek verbs with
a persistency which soon placed him at the head of all
competitors.

Only once in the long winter did he come near to breaking his
promise. One evening, when March was melting into April, and
the pulses of spring were stirring under the lingering snow,
he was walking home from school alone. As he descended into
the little hollow below the manse a lively lilt of music
drifted up to meet him. It was only the product of a mouth-
organ, manipulated by a little black-eyed, French-Canadian
hired boy, sitting on the fence by the brook; but there was
music in the ragged urchin and it came out through his simple
toy. It tingled over Felix from head to foot; and, when Leon
held out the mouth-organ with a fraternal grin of invitation,
he snatched at it as a famished creature might snatch at food.

Then, with it half-way to his lips, he paused. True, it was
only the violin he had promised never to touch; but he felt
that if he gave way ever so little to the desire that was in
him, it would sweep everything before it. If he played on Leon
Buote's mouth-organ, there in that misty spring dale, he would
go to old Abel's that evening; he KNEW he would go. To
Leon's amazement, Felix threw the mouth-organ back at him and
ran up the hill as if he were pursued. There was something in
his boyish face that frightened Leon; and it frightened Janet
Andrews as Felix rushed past her in the hall of the manse.

"Child, what's the matter with you?" she cried. "Are you sick?
Have you been scared?"

"No, no. Leave me alone, Janet," said Felix chokingly, dashing
up the stairs to his own room.

He was quite composed when he came down to tea, an hour later,
though he was unusually pale and had purple shadows under his
large eyes.

Mr. Leonard scrutinized him somewhat anxiously; it suddenly
occurred to the old minister that Felix was looking more
delicate than his wont this spring. Well, he had studied hard
all winter, and he was certainly growing very fast. When
vacation came he must be sent away for a visit.

"They tell me Naomi Clark is real sick," said Janet. "She has
been ailing all winter, and now she's fast to her bed. Mrs.
Murphy says she believes the woman is dying, but nobody dares
tell her so. She won't give in she's sick, nor take medicine.
And there's nobody to wait on her except that simple creature,
Maggie Peterson."

"I wonder if I ought to go and see her," said Mr. Leonard
uneasily.

"What use would it be to bother yourself? You know she
wouldn't see you--she'd shut the door in your face like she
did before. She's an awful wicked woman--but it's kind of
terrible to think of her lying there sick, with no responsible
person to tend her."

"Naomi Clark is a bad woman and she lived a life of shame, but
I like her, for all that," remarked Felix, in the grave,
meditative tone in which he occasionally said rather startling
things.

Mr. Leonard looked somewhat reproachfully at Janet Andrews, as
if to ask her why Felix should have attained to this dubious
knowledge of good and evil under her care; and Janet shot a
dour look back which, being interpreted, meant that if Felix
went to the district school she could not and would not be
held responsible if he learned more there than arithmetic and
Latin.

"What do you know of Naomi Clark to like or dislike?" she
asked curiously. "Did you ever see her?"

"Oh, yes," Felix replied, addressing himself to his cherry
preserve with considerable gusto. "I was down at Spruce Cove
one night last summer when a big thunderstorm came up. I went
to Naomi's house for shelter. The door was open, so I walked
right in, because nobody answered my knock. Naomi Clark was at
the window, watching the cloud coming up over the sea. She
just looked at me once, but didn't say anything, and then went
on watching the cloud. I didn't like to sit down because she
hadn't asked me to, so I went to the window by her and watched
it, too. It was a dreadful sight--the cloud was so black and
the water so green, and there was such a strange light between
the cloud and the water; yet there was something splendid in
it, too. Part of the time I watched the storm, and the other
part I watched Naomi's face. It was dreadful to see, like the
storm, and yet I liked to see it.

"After the thunder was over it rained a while longer, and
Naomi sat down and talked to me. She asked me who I was, and
when I told her she asked me to play something for her on her
violin,"--Felix shot a deprecating glance at Mr. Leonard--
"because, she said, she'd heard I was a great hand at it. She
wanted something lively, and I tried just as hard as I could
to play something like that. But I couldn't. I played
something that was terrible--it just played itself--it seemed
as if something was lost that could never be found again. And
before I got through, Naomi came at me, and tore the violin
from me, and--SWORE. And she said, 'You big-eyed brat, how
did you know THAT?' Then she took me by the arm--and she
hurt me, too, I can tell you--and she put me right out in the
rain and slammed the door."

"The rude, unmannerly creature!" said Janet indignantly.

"Oh, no, she was quite in the right," said Felix composedly.
"It served me right for what I played. You see, she didn't
know I couldn't help playing it. I suppose she thought I did
it on purpose."

"What on earth did you play, child?"

"I don't know." Felix shivered. "It was awful--it was
dreadful. It was fit to break you heart. But it HAD to be
played, if I played anything at all."

"I don't understand what you mean--I declare I don't," said
Janet in bewilderment.

"I think we'll change the subject of conversation," said Mr.
Leonard.

It was a month later when "the simple creature, Maggie"
appeared at the manse door one evening and asked for the
preached.

"Naomi wants ter see yer," she mumbled. "Naomi sent Maggie ter
tell yer ter come at onct."

"I shall go, certainly," said Mr. Leonard gently. "Is she very
ill?"

"Her's dying," said Maggie with a broad grin. "And her's awful
skeered of hell. Her just knew ter-day her was dying. Maggie
told her--her wouldn't believe the harbour women, but her
believed Maggie. Her yelled awful."

Maggie chuckled to herself over the gruesome remembrance. Mr.
Leonard, his heart filled with pity, called Janet and told her
to give the poor creature some refreshment. But Maggie shook
her head.

"No, no, preacher, Maggie must get right back to Naomi.
Maggie'll tell her the preacher's coming ter save her from
hell."

She uttered an eerie cry, and ran at full speed shoreward
through the spruce woods.

"The Lord save us!" said Janet in an awed tone. "I knew the
poor girl was simple, but I didn't know she was like THAT.
And are you going, sir?"

"Yes, of course. I pray God I may be able to help the poor
soul," said Mr. Leonard sincerely. He was a man who never
shirked what he believed to be his duty; but duty had
sometimes presented itself to him in pleasanter guise than
this summons to Naomi Clark's death-bed.

The woman had been the plague spot of Lower Carmody and
Carmody Harbour for a generation. In the earlier days of his
ministry to the congregation he had tried to reclaim her, and
Naomi had mocked and flouted him to his face. Then, for the
sake of those to whom she was a snare or a heart-break, he had
endeavoured to set the law in motion against her, and Naomi
had laughed the law to scorn. Finally, he had been compelled
to let her alone.

Yet Naomi had not always been an outcast. Her girlhood had
been innocent; but she was the possessor of a dangerous
beauty, and her mother was dead. Her father was a man
notorious for his harshness and violence of temper. When Naomi
made the fatal mistake of trusting to a false love that
betrayed and deserted, he drove her from his door with taunts
and curses.

Naomi took up her quarters in a little deserted house at
Spruce Cove. Had her child lived it might have saved her. But
it died at birth, and with its little life went her last
chance of worldly redemption. From that time forth, her feet
were set in the way that takes hold on hell.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15