Chronicles of Avonlea

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For the past five years, however, Naomi had lived a tolerably
respectable life. When Janet Peterson had died, her idiot
daughter, Maggie, had been left with no kin in the world.
Nobody knew what was to be done with her, for nobody wanted to
be bothered with her. Naomi Clark went to the girl and offered
her a home. People said she was no fit person to have charge
of Maggie, but everybody shirked the unpleasant task of
interfering in the matter, except Mr. Leonard, who went to
expostulate with Naomi, and, as Janet said, for his pains got
her door shut in his face.

But from the day when Maggie Peterson went to live with her,
Naomi ceased to be the harbour Magdalen.

The sun had set when Mr. Leonard reached Spruce Cove, and the
harbour was veiling itself in a wondrous twilight splendour.
Afar out, the sea lay throbbing and purple, and the moan of
the bar came through the sweet, chill spring air with its
burden of hopeless, endless longing and seeking. The sky was
blossoming into stars above the afterglow; out to the east the
moon was rising, and the sea beneath it was a thing of
radiance and silver and glamour; and a little harbour boat
that went sailing across it was transmuted into an elfin
shallop from the coast of fairyland.

Mr. Leonard sighed as he turned from the sinless beauty of the
sea and sky to the threshold of Naomi Clark's house. It was
very small--one room below, and a sleeping-loft above; but a
bed had been made up for the sick woman by the down-stairs
window looking out on the harbour; and Naomi lay on it, with a
lamp burning at her head and another at her side, although it
was not yet dark. A great dread of darkness had always been
one of Naomi's peculiarities.

She was tossing restlessly on her poor couch, while Maggie
crouched on a box at the foot. Mr. Leonard had not seen her
for five years, and he was shocked at the change in her. She
was much wasted; her clear-cut, aquiline features had been of
the type which becomes indescribably witch-like in old age,
and, though Naomi Clark was barely sixty, she looked as if she
might be a hundred. Her hair streamed over the pillow in
white, uncared-for tresses, and the hands that plucked at the
bed-clothes were like wrinkled claws. Only her eyes were
unchanged; they were as blue and brilliant as ever, but now
filled with such agonized terror and appeal that Mr. Leonard's
gentle heart almost stood still with the horror of them. They
were the eyes of a creature driven wild with torture, hounded
by furies, clutched by unutterable fear.

Naomi sat up and dragged at his arm.

"Can you help me? Can you help me?" she gasped imploringly.
"Oh, I thought you'd never come! I was skeered I'd die before
you got here--die and go to hell. I didn't know before today
that I was dying. None of those cowards would tell me. Can you
help me?"

"If I cannot, God can," said Mr. Leonard gently. He felt
himself very helpless and inefficient before this awful terror
and frenzy. He had seen sad death-beds--troubled death-beds--
ay, and despairing death-beds, but never anything like this.
"God!" Naomi's voice shrilled terribly as she uttered the
name. "I can't go to God for help. Oh, I'm skeered of hell,
but I'm skeereder still of God. I'd rather go to hell a
thousand times over than face God after the life I've lived. I
tell you, I'm sorry for living wicked--I was always sorry for
it all the time. There ain't never been a moment I wasn't
sorry, though nobody would believe it. I was driven on by
fiends of hell. Oh, you don't understand--you CAN'T
understand--but I was always sorry!"

"If you repent, that is all that is necessary. God will
forgive you if you ask Him."

"No, He can't! Sins like mine can't be forgiven. He can't--and
He won't."

"He can and He will. He is a God of love, Naomi."

"No," said Naomi with stubborn conviction. "He isn't a God of
love at all. That's why I'm skeered of him. No, no. He's a God
of wrath and justice and punishment. Love! There ain't no such
thing as love! I've never found it on earth, and I don't
believe it's to be found in God."

"Naomi, God loves us like a father."

"Like MY father?" Naomi's shrill laughter, pealing through
the still room, was hideous to hear.

The old minister shuddered.

"No--no! As a kind, tender, all-wise father, Naomi--as you
would have loved your little child if it had lived."

Naomi cowered and moaned.

"Oh, I wish I could believe THAT. I wouldn't be frightened
if I could believe that. MAKE me believe it. Surely you can
make me believe that there's love and forgiveness in God if
you believe it yourself."

"Jesus Christ forgave and loved the Magdalen, Naomi."

"Jesus Christ? Oh, I ain't afraid of HIM. Yes, HE could
understand and forgive. He was half human. I tell you, it's
God I'm skeered of."

"They are one and the same," said Mr. Leonard helplessly. He
knew he could not make Naomi realize it. This anguished death-
bed was no place for a theological exposition on the mysteries
of the Trinity.

"Christ died for you, Naomi. He bore your sins in His own body
on the cross."

"We bear our own sins," said Naomi fiercely. "I've borne mine
all my life--and I'll bear them for all eternity. I can't
believe anything else. I CAN'T believe God can forgive me.
I've ruined people body and soul--I've broken hearts and
poisoned homes--I'm worse than a murderess. No--no--no,
there's no hope for me." Her voice rose again into that
shrill, intolerable shriek. "I've got to go to hell. It ain't
so much the fire I'm skeered of as the outer darkness. I've
always been so skeered of darkness--it's so full of awful
things and thoughts. Oh, there ain't nobody to help me! Man
ain't no good and I'm too skeered of God."

She wrung her hands. Mr. Leonard walked up and down the room
in the keenest anguish of spirit he had ever known. What could
he do? What could he say? There was healing and peace in his
religion for this woman as for all others, but he could
express it in no language which this tortured soul could
understand. He looked at her writhing face; he looked at the
idiot girl chuckling to herself at the foot of the bed; he
looked through the open door to the remote, starlit night--and
a horrible sense of utter helplessness overcame him. He could
do nothing--nothing! In all his life he had never known such
bitterness of soul as the realization brought home to him.

"What is the good of you if you can't help me?" moaned the
dying woman. "Pray--pray--pray!" she shrilled suddenly.

Mr. Leonard dropped on his knees by the bed. He did not know
what to say. No prayer that he had ever prayed was of use
here. The old, beautiful formulas, which had soothed and
helped the passing of many a soul, were naught save idle,
empty words to Naomi Clark. In his anguish of mind Stephen
Leonard gasped out the briefest and sincerest prayer his lips
had ever uttered.

"O, God, our Father! Help this woman. Speak to her in a tongue
which she can understand."

A beautiful, white face appeared for a moment in the light
that streamed out of the doorway into the darkness of the
night. No one noticed it, and it quickly drew back into the
shadow. Suddenly, Naomi fell back on her pillow, her lips
blue, her face horribly pinched, her eyes rolled up in her
head. Maggie started up, pushed Mr. Leonard aside, and
proceeded to administer some remedy with surprising skill and
deftness. Mr. Leonard, believing Naomi to be dying, went to
the door, feeling sick and bruised in soul.

Presently a figure stole out into the light.

"Felix, is that you?" said Mr. Leonard in a startled tone.

"Yes, sir." Felix came up to the stone step. "Janet got
frightened what you might fall on that rough road after dark,
so she made me come after you with a lantern. I've been
waiting behind the point, but at last I thought I'd better
come and see if you would be staying much longer. If you will
be, I'll go back to Janet and leave the lantern here with
you."
"Yes, that will be the best thing to do. I may not be ready to
go home for some time yet," said Mr. Leonard, thinking that
the death-bed of sin behind him was no sight for Felix's young
eyes.

"Is that your grandson you're talking to?" Naomi spoke clearly
and strongly. The spasm had passed. "If it is, bring him in. I
want to see him."

Reluctantly, Mr. Leonard signed Felix to enter. The boy stood
by Naomi's bed and looked down at her with sympathetic eyes.
But at first she did not look at him--she looked past him at
the minister.

"I might have died in that spell," she said, with sullen
reproach in her voice, "and if I had, I'd been in hell now.
You can't help me--I'm done with you. There ain't any hope for
me, and I know it now."

She turned to Felix.

"Take down that fiddle on the wall and play something for me,"
she said imperiously. "I'm dying--and I'm going to hell--and I
don't want to think of it. Play me something to take my
thoughts off it--I don't care what you play. I was always fond
of music--there was always something in it for me I never
found anywhere else."

Felix looked at his grandfather. The old man nodded, he felt
too ashamed to speak; he sat with his fine silver head in his
hands, while Felix took down and tuned the old violin, on
which so many godless lilts had been played in many a wild
revel. Mr. Leonard felt that he had failed his religion. He
could not give Naomi the help that was in it for her.

Felix drew the bow softly, perplexedly over the strings. He
had no idea what he should play. Then his eyes were caught and
held by Naomi's burning, mesmeric, blue gaze as she lay on her
crumpled pillow. A strange, inspired look came over the boy's
face. He began to play as if it were not he who played, but
some mightier power, of which he was but the passive
instrument.

Sweet and soft and wonderful was the music that stole through
the room. Mr. Leonard forgot his heartbreak and listened to it
in puzzled amazement. He had never heard anything like it
before. How could the child play like that? He looked at Naomi
and marvelled at the change in her face. The fear and frenzy
were going out of it; she listened breathlessly, never taking
her eyes from Felix. At the foot of the bed the idiot girl sat
with tears on her cheeks.

In that strange music was the joy of the innocent, mirthful
childhood, blent with the laughter of waves and the call of
glad winds. Then it held the wild, wayward dreams of youth,
sweet and pure in all their wildness and waywardness. They
were followed by a rapture of young love--all-surrendering,
all-sacrificing love.
The music changed. It held the torture of unshed tears, the
anguish of a heart deceived and desolate. Mr. Leonard almost
put his hands over his ears to shut out its intolerable
poignancy. But on the dying woman's face was only a strange
relief, as if some dumb, long-hidden pain had at last won to
the healing of utterance.

The sullen indifference of despair came next, the bitterness
of smouldering revolt and misery, the reckless casting away of
all good. There was something indescribably evil in the music
now--so evil that Mr. Leonard's white soul shuddered away in
loathing, and Maggie cowered and whined like a frightened
animal.

Again the music changed. And in it now there was agony and
fear--and repentance and a cry for pardon. To Mr. Leonard
there was something strangely familiar in it. He struggled to
recall where he had heard it before; then he suddenly knew--he
had heard it before Felix came in Naomi's terrible words! He
looked at his grandson with something like awe. Here was a
power of which he knew nothing--a strange and dreadful power.
Was it of God? Or of Satan?

For the last time the music changed. And now it was not music
at all--it was a great, infinite forgiveness, an all-
comprehending love. It was healing for a sick soul; it was
light and hope and peace. A Bible text, seemingly incongruous,
came into Mr. Leonard's mind--"This is the house of God; this
is the gate of heaven."

Felix lowered the violin and dropped wearily on a chair by the
bed. The inspired light faded from his face; once more he was
only a tired boy. But Stephen Leonard was on his knees,
sobbing like a child; and Naomi Clark was lying still, with
her hands clasped over her breast.

"I understand now," she said very softly. "I couldn't see it
before--and now it's so plain. I just FEEL it. God IS a
God of love. He can forgive anybody--even me--even me. He
knows all about it. I ain't skeered any more. He just loves me
and forgives me as I'd have loved and forgiven my baby if
she'd lived, no matter how bad she was, or what she did. The
minister told me that but I couldn't believe it. I KNOW it
now. And He sent you here to-night, boy, to tell it to me in a
way that I could feel it."

Naomi Clark died just as the dawn came up over the sea. Mr.
Leonard rose from his watch at her bedside and went to the
door. Before him spread the harbour, gray and austere in the
faint light, but afar out the sun was rending asunder the
milk-white mists in which the sea was scarfed, and under it
was a virgin glow of sparkling water.

The fir trees on the point moved softly and whispered
together. The whole world sang of spring and resurrection and
life; and behind him Naomi Clark's dead face took on the peace
that passes understanding.

The old minister and his grandson walked home together in a
silence that neither wished to break. Janet Andrews gave them
a good scolding and an excellent breakfast. Then she ordered
them both to bed; but Mr. Leonard, smiling at her, said:

"Presently, Janet, presently. But now, take this key, go up to
the black chest in the garret, and bring me what you will find
there."

When Janet had gone, he turned to Felix.

"Felix, would you like to study music as your life-work?"

Felix looked up, with a transfiguring flush on his wan face.

"Oh, grandfather! Oh, grandfather!"

"You may do so, my child. After this night I dare not hinder
you. Go with my blessing, and may God guide and keep you, and
make you strong to do His work and tell His message to
humanity in you own appointed way. It is not the way I desired
for you--but I see that I was mistaken. Old Abel spoke truly
when he said there was a Christ in your violin as well as a
devil. I understand what he meant now."

He turned to meet Janet, who came into the study with a
violin. Felix's heart throbbed; he recognized it. Mr. Leonard
took it from Janet and held it out to the boy.

"This is your father's violin, Felix. See to it that you never
make your music the servant of the power of evil--never debase
it to unworthy ends. For your responsibility is as your gift,
and God will exact the accounting of it from you. Speak to the
world in your own tongue through it, with truth and sincerity;
and all I have hoped for you will be abundantly fulfilled."

IV. Little Joscelyn

"It simply isn't to be thought of, Aunty Nan," said Mrs.
William Morrison decisively. Mrs. William Morrison was one of
those people who always speak decisively. If they merely
announce that they are going to peel the potatoes for dinner
their hearers realize that there is no possible escape for the
potatoes. Moreover, these people are always given their full
title by everybody. William Morrison was called Billy oftener
than not; but, if you had asked for Mrs. Billy Morrison,
nobody in Avonlea would have known what you meant at first
guess.

"You must see that for yourself, Aunty," went on Mrs. William,
hulling strawberries nimbly with her large, firm, white
fingers as she talked. Mrs. William always improved every
shining moment. "It is ten miles to Kensington, and just think
how late you would be getting back. You are not able for such
a drive. You wouldn't get over it for a month. You know you
are anything but strong this summer."

Aunty Nan sighed, and patted the tiny, furry, gray morsel of a
kitten in her lap with trembling fingers. She knew, better
than anyone else could know it, that she was not strong that
summer. In her secret soul, Aunty Nan, sweet and frail and
timid under the burden of her seventy years, felt with
mysterious unmistakable prescience that it was to be her last
summer at the Gull Point Farm. But that was only the more
reason why she should go to hear little Joscelyn sing; she
would never have another chance. And oh, to hear little
Joscelyn sing just once--Joscelyn, whose voice was delighting
thousands out in the big world, just as in the years gone by
it had delighted Aunty Nan and the dwellers at the Gull Point
Farm for a whole golden summer with carols at dawn and dusk
about the old place!

"Oh, I know I'm not very strong, Maria." said Aunty Nan
pleadingly, "but I am strong enough for that. Indeed I am. I
could stay at Kensington over night with George's folks, you
know, and so it wouldn't tire me much. I do so want to hear
Joscelyn sing. Oh, how I love little Joscelyn."

"It passes my understanding, the way you hanker after that
child," cried Mrs. William impatiently. "Why, she was a
perfect stranger to you when she came here, and she was here
only one summer!"

"But oh, such a summer!" said Aunty Nan softly. "We all loved
little Joscelyn. She just seemed like one of our own. She was
one of God's children, carrying love with them everywhere. In
some ways that little Anne Shirley the Cuthberts have got up
there at Green Gables reminds me of her, though in other ways
they're not a bit alike. Joscelyn was a beauty."

"Well, that Shirley snippet certainly isn't that," said Mrs.
William sarcastically. "And if Joscelyn's tongue was one third
as long as Anne Shirley's the wonder to me is that she didn't
talk you all to death out of hand."

"Little Joscelyn wasn't much of a talker," said Aunty Nan
dreamily. "She was kind of a quiet child. But you remember
what she did say. And I've never forgotten little Joscelyn."

Mrs. William shrugged her plump, shapely shoulders.

"Well, it was fifteen years ago, Aunty Nan, and Joscelyn can't
be very 'little' now. She is a famous woman, and she has
forgotten all about you, you can be sure of that."

"Joscelyn wasn't the kind that forgets," said Aunty Nan
loyally. "And, anyway, the point is, _I_ haven't forgotten
HER. Oh, Maria, I've longed for years and years just to hear
her sing once more. It seems as if I MUST hear my little
Joscelyn sing once again before I die. I've never had the
chance before and I never will have it again. Do please ask
William to take me to Kensington."

"Dear me, Aunty Nan, this is really childish," said Mrs.
William, whisking her bowlful of berries into the pantry. "You
must let other folks be the judge of what is best for you now.
You aren't strong enough to drive to Kensington, and, even if
you were, you know well enough that William couldn't go to
Kensington to-morrow night. He has got to attend that
political meeting at Newbridge. They can't do without him."

"Jordan could take me to Kensington," pleaded Aunty Nan, with
very unusual persistence.

"Nonsense! You couldn't go to Kensington with the hired man.
Now, Aunty Nan, do be reasonable. Aren't William and I kind to
you? Don't we do everything for your comfort?"

"Yes, oh, yes," admitted Aunty Nan deprecatingly.

"Well, then, you ought to be guided by our opinion. And you
must just give up thinking about the Kensington concert,
Aunty, and not worry yourself and me about it any more. I am
going down to the shore field now to call William to tea. Just
keep an eye on the baby in chance he wakes up, and see that
the teapot doesn't boil over."

Mrs. William whisked out of the kitchen, pretending not to see
the tears that were falling over Aunty Nan's withered pink
cheeks. Aunty Nan was really getting very childish, Mrs.
William reflected, as she marched down to the shore field.
Why, she cried now about every little thing! And such a
notion--to want to go to the Old Timers' concert at Kensington
and be so set on it! Really, it was hard to put up with her
whims. Mrs. William sighed virtuously.

As for Aunty Nan, she sat alone in the kitchen, and cried
bitterly, as only lonely old age can cry. It seemed to her
that she could not bear it, that she MUST go to Kensington.
But she knew that it was not to be, since Mrs. William had
decided otherwise. Mrs. William's word was law at Gull Point
Farm.

"What's the matter with my old Aunty Nan?" cried a hearty
young voice from the doorway. Jordan Sloane stood there, his
round, freckled face looking as anxious and sympathetic as it
was possible for such a very round, very freckled face to
look. Jordan was the Morrisons' hired boy that summer, and he
worshipped Aunty Nan.

"Oh, Jordan," sobbed Aunty Nan, who was not above telling her
troubles to the hired help, although Mrs. William thought she
ought to be, "I can't go to Kensington to-morrow night to hear
little Joscelyn sing at the Old Timers' concert. Maria says I
can't."

"That's too bad," said Jordan. "Old cat," he muttered after
the retreating and serenely unconscious Mrs. William. Then he
shambled in and sat down on the sofa beside Aunty Nan.

"There, there, don't cry," he said, patting her thin little
shoulder with his big, sunburned paw. "You'll make yourself
sick if you go on crying, and we can't get along without you
at Gull Point Farm."

Aunty Nan smiled wanly.

"I'm afraid you'll soon have to get on without me, Jordan. I'm
not going to be here very long now. No, I'm not, Jordan, I
know it. Something tells me so very plainly. But I would be
willing to go--glad to go, for I'm very tired, Jordan--if I
could only have heard little Joscelyn sing once more."

"Why are you so set on hearing her?" asked Jordan. "She ain't
no kin to you, is she?"

"No, but dearer to me--dearer to me than many of my own. Maria
thinks that is silly, but you wouldn't if you'd known her,
Jordan. Even Maria herself wouldn't, if she had known her. It
is fifteen years since she came here one summer to board. She
was a child of thirteen then, and hadn't any relations except
an old uncle who sent her to school in winter and boarded her
out in summer, and didn't care a rap about her. The child was
just starving for love, Jordan, and she got it here. William
and his brothers were just children then, and they hadn't any
sister. We all just worshipped her. She was so sweet, Jordan.
And pretty, oh my! like a little girl in a picture, with great
long curls, all black and purply and fine as spun silk, and
big dark eyes, and such pink cheeks--real wild rose cheeks.
And sing! My land! But couldn't she sing! Always singing,
every hour of the day that voice was ringing round the old
place. I used to hold my breath to hear it. She always said
that she meant to be a famous singer some day, and I never
doubted it a mite. It was born in her. Sunday evening she used
to sing hymns for us. Oh, Jordan, it makes my old heart young
again to remember it. A sweet child she was, my little
Joscelyn! She used to write me for three or four years after
she went away, but I haven't heard a word from her for long
and long. I daresay she has forgotten me, as Maria says.
'Twouldn't be any wonder. But I haven't forgotten her, and oh,
I want to see and hear her terrible much. She is to sing at
the Old Timers' concert to-morrow night at Kensington. The
folks who are getting the concert up are friends of hers, or,
of course, she'd never have come to a little country village.
Only sixteen miles away--and I can't go."

Jordan couldn't think of anything to say. He reflected
savagely that if he had a horse of his own he would take Aunty
Nan to Kensington, Mrs. William or no Mrs. William. Though, to
be sure, it WAS a long drive for her; and she was looking
very frail this summer.

"Ain't going to last long," muttered Jordan, making his escape
by the porch door as Mrs. William puffed in by the other. "The
sweetest old creetur that ever was created'll go when she
goes. Yah, ye old madam, I'd like to give you a piece of my
mind, that I would!"

This last was for Mrs. William, but was delivered in a prudent
undertone. Jordan detested Mrs. William, but she was a power
to be reckoned with, all the same. Meek, easy-going Billy
Morrison did just what his wife told him to.

So Aunty Nan did not get to Kensington to hear little Joscelyn
sing. She said nothing more about it but after that night she
seemed to fail very rapidly. Mrs. William said it was the hot
weather, and that Aunty Nan gave way too easily. But Aunty Nan
could not help giving way now; she was very, very tired. Even
her knitting wearied her. She would sit for hours in her
rocking chair with the gray kitten in her lap, looking out of
the window with dreamy, unseeing eyes. She talked to herself a
good deal, generally about little Joscelyn. Mrs. William told
Avonlea folk that Aunty Nan had got terribly childish and
always accompanied the remark with a sigh that intimated how
much she, Mrs. William, had to contend with.

Justice must be done to Mrs. William, however. She was not
unkind to Aunty Nan; on the contrary, she was very kind to her
in the letter. Her comfort was scrupulously attended to, and
Mrs. William had the grace to utter none of her complaints in
the old woman's hearing. If Aunty Nan felt the absence of the
spirit she never murmured at it.

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