Chronicles of Avonlea
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Lucy Maud Montgomery >> Chronicles of Avonlea
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She noted, too, how well the gown became her eyes, bringing
out all the deeper colour in them. Lucinda had magnificent
eyes. Once Romney had written a sonnet to them in which he
compared their colour to ripe blueberries. This may not sound
poetical to you unless you know or remember just what the
tints of ripe blueberries are--dusky purple in some lights,
clear slate in others, and yet again in others the misty hue
of early meadow violets.
"You really look very well," remarked the real Lucinda to the
mirrored Lucinda. "Nobody would think you were an old maid.
But you are. Alice Penhallow, who is to be married to-night,
was a child of five when you thought of being married fifteen
years ago. That makes you an old maid, my dear. Well, it is
your own fault, and it will continue to be your own fault, you
stubborn offshoot of a stubborn breed!"
She flung her train out straight and pulled on her gloves.
"I do hope I won't get any spots on this dress to-night," she
reflected. "It will have to do me for a gala dress for a year
at least--and I have a creepy conviction that it is fearfully
spottable. Bless Uncle Mark's good, uncalculating heart! How I
would have detested it if he had given me something sensible
and useful and ugly--as Aunt Emilia would have done."
They all went to "young" John Penhallow's at early moonrise.
Lucinda drove over the two miles of hill and dale with a
youthful second cousin, by name, Carey Penhallow. The wedding
was quite a brilliant affair. Lucinda seemed to pervade the
social atmosphere, and everywhere she went a little ripple of
admiration trailed after her like a wave. She was undeniably a
belle, yet she found herself feeling faintly bored and was
rather glad than otherwise when the guests began to fray off.
"I'm afraid I'm losing my capacity for enjoyment," she
thought, a little drearily. "Yes, I must be growing old. That
is what it means when social functions begin to bore you."
It was that unlucky Mrs. George who blundered again. She was
standing on the veranda when Carey Penhallow dashed up.
"Tell Lucinda that I can't take her back to the Grange. I have
to drive Mark and Cissy Penhallow to Bright River to catch the
two o'clock express. There will be plenty of chances for her
with the others."
At this moment George Penhallow, holding his rearing horse
with difficulty, shouted for his wife. Mrs. George, all in a
flurry, dashed back into the still crowded hall. Exactly to
whom she gave her message was never known to any of the
Penhallows. But a tall, ruddy-haired girl, dressed in pale
green organdy--Anne Shirley from Avonlea--told Marilla
Cuthbert and Rachel Lynde as a joke the next morning how a
chubby little woman in a bright pink fascinator had clutched
her by the arm, and gasped out:
"Carey Penhallow can't take you--he says you're to look out
for someone else," and was gone before she could answer or
turn around.
Thus it was that Lucinda, when she came out to the veranda
step, found herself unaccountably deserted. All the Grange
Penhallows were gone; Lucinda realized this after a few
moments of bewildered seeking, and she understood that if she
were to get to the Grange that night she must walk. Plainly
there was nobody to take her.
Lucinda was angry. It is not pleasant to find yourself
forgotten and neglected. It is still less pleasant to walk
home alone along a country road, at one o'clock in the
morning, wearing a pale green voile. Lucinda was not prepared
for such a walk. She had nothing on her feet save thin-soled
shoes, and her only wraps were a flimsy fascinator and a short
coat.
"What a guy I shall look, stalking home alone in this rig,"
she thought crossly.
There was no help for it, unless she confessed her plight to
some of the stranger guests and begged a drive home. Lucinda's
pride scorned such a request and the admission of neglect it
involved. No, she would walk, since that was all there was to
it; but she would not go by the main road to be stared at by
all and sundry who might pass her. There was a short cut by
way of a lane across the fields; she knew every inch of it,
although she had not traversed it for years.
She gathered up the green voile as trimly as possible, slipped
around the house in the kindly shadows, picked her way across
the side lawn, and found a gate which opened into a birch-
bordered lane where the frosted trees shone with silvery-
golden radiance in the moonlight. Lucinda flitted down the
lane, growing angrier at every step as the realization of how
shamefully she seemed to have been treated came home to her.
She believed that nobody had thought about her at all, which
was tenfold worse than premeditated neglect.
As she came to the gate at the lower end of the lane a man who
was leaning over it started, with a quick intake of his
breath, which, in any other man than Romney Penhallow, or for
any other woman than Lucinda Penhallow, would have been an
exclamation of surprise.
Lucinda recognized him with a great deal of annoyance and a
little relief. She would not have to walk home alone. But with
Romney Penhallow! Would he think she had contrived it so
purposely?
Romney silently opened the gate for her, silently latched it
behind her, and silently fell into step beside her. Down
across a velvety sweep of field they went; the air was frosty,
calm and still; over the world lay a haze of moonshine and
mist that converted East Grafton's prosaic hills and fields
into a shimmering fairyland.
At first Lucinda felt angrier than ever. What a ridiculous
situation! How the Penhallows would laugh over it!
As for Romney, he, too, was angry with the trick impish chance
had played him. He liked being the butt of an awkward
situation as little as most men; and certainly to be obliged
to walk home over moonlit fields at one o'clock in the morning
with the woman he had loved and never spoken to for fifteen
years was the irony of fate with a vengeance. Would she think
he had schemed for it? And how the deuce did she come to be
walking home from the wedding at all?
By the time they had crossed the field and reached the wild
cherry lane beyond it, Lucinda's anger was mastered by her
saving sense of humour. She was even smiling a little
maliciously under her fascinator.
The lane was a place of enchantment--a long, moonlit colonnade
adown which beguiling wood nymphs might have footed it featly.
The moonshine fell through the arching boughs and made a
mosaic of silver light and clear-cut shadow for the unfriendly
lovers to walk in. On either side was the hovering gloom of
the woods, and around them was a great silence unstirred by
wind or murmur.
Midway in the lane Lucinda was attacked by a sentimental
recollection. She thought of the last time Romney and she had
walked home together through this very lane, from a party at
"young" John's. It had been moonlight then too, and--Lucinda
checked a sigh--they had walked hand in hand. Just here, by
the big gray beech, he had stopped her and kissed her. Lucinda
wondered if he were thinking of it, too, and stole a look at
him from under the lace border of her fascinator.
But he was striding moodily along with his hands in his
pockets, and his hat pulled down over his eyes, passing the
old beech without a glance at it. Lucinda checked another
sigh, gathered up an escaped flutter of voile, and marched on.
Past the lane a range of three silvery harvest fields sloped
down to Peter Penhallow's brook--a wide, shallow stream
bridged over in the olden days by the mossy trunk of an
ancient fallen tree. When Lucinda and Romney arrived at the
brook they gazed at the brawling water blankly. Lucinda
remembered that she must not speak to Romney just in time to
prevent an exclamation of dismay. There was no tree! There was
no bridge of any kind over the brook!
Here was a predicament! But before Lucinda could do more than
despairingly ask herself what was to be done now, Romney
answered--not in words, but in deeds. He coolly picked Lucinda
up in his arms, as if she had been a child instead of a full
grown woman of no mean avoirdupois, and began to wade with her
through the water.
Lucinda gasped helplessly. She could not forbid him and she
was so choked with rage over his presumption that she could
not have spoken in any case. Then came the catastrophe.
Romney's foot slipped on a treacherous round stone--there was
a tremendous splash--and Romney and Lucinda Penhallow were
sitting down in the middle of Peter Penhallow's brook.
Lucinda was the first to regain her feet. About her clung in
heart-breaking limpness the ruined voile. The remembrance of
all her wrongs that night rushed over her soul, and her eyes
blazed in the moonlight. Lucinda Penhallow had never been so
angry in her life.
"YOU D--D IDIOT!" she said, in a voice that literally shook
with rage.
Romney meekly scrambled up the bank after her.
"I'm awfully sorry, Lucinda," he said, striving with uncertain
success to keep a suspicious quiver of laughter out of his
tone. "It was wretchedly clumsy of me, but that pebble turned
right under my foot. Please forgive me--for that--and for
other things."
Lucinda deigned no answer. She stood on a flat stone and wrung
the water from the poor green voile. Romney surveyed her
apprehensively.
"Hurry, Lucinda," he entreated. "You will catch your death of
cold."
"I never take cold," answered Lucinda, with chattering teeth.
"And it is my dress I am thinking of--was thinking of. You
have more need to hurry. You are sopping wet yourself and you
know you are subject to colds. There--come."
Lucinda picked up the stringy train, which had been so brave
and buoyant five minutes before, and started up the field at a
brisk rate. Romney came up to her and slipped his arm through
hers in the old way. For a time they walked along in silence.
Then Lucinda began to shake with inward laughter. She laughed
silently for the whole length of the field; and at the line
fence between Peter Penhallow's land and the Grange acres she
paused, threw back the fascinator from her face, and looked at
Romney defiantly.
"You are thinking of--THAT," she cried, "and I am thinking
of it. And we will go on, thinking of it at intervals for the
rest of our lives. But if you ever mention it to me I'll never
forgive you, Romney Penhallow!"
"I never will," Romney promised. There was more than a
suspicion of laughter in his voice this time, but Lucinda did
not choose to resent it. She did not speak again until they
reached the Grange gate. Then she faced him solemnly.
"It was a case of atavism," she said. "Old Grandfather Gordon
was to blame for it."
At the Grange almost everybody was in bed. What with the
guests straggling home at intervals and hurrying sleepily off
to their rooms, nobody had missed Lucinda, each set supposing
she was with some other set. Mrs. Frederick, Mrs. Nathaniel
and Mrs. George alone were up. The perennially chilly Mrs.
Nathaniel had kindled a fire of chips in the blue room grate
to warm her feet before retiring, and the three women were
discussing the wedding in subdued tones when the door opened
and the stately form of Lucinda, stately even in the dragged
voile, appeared, with the damp Romney behind her.
"Lucinda Penhallow!" gasped they, one and all.
"I was left to walk home," said Lucinda coolly. "So Romney and
I came across the fields. There was no bridge over the brook,
and when he was carrying me over he slipped and we fell in.
That is all. No, Cecilia, I never take cold, so don't worry.
Yes, my dress is ruined, but that is of no consequence. No,
thank you, Cecilia, I do not care for a hot drink. Romney, do
go and take off those wet clothes of yours immediately. No,
Cecilia, I will NOT take a hot footbath. I am going straight
to bed. Good night."
When the door closed on the pair the three sisters-in-law
stared at each other. Mrs. Frederick, feeling herself
incapable of expressing her sensations originally, took refuge
in a quotation:
"'Do I sleep, do I dream, do I wonder and doubt?
Is things what they seem, or is visions about?'"
"There will be another Penhallow wedding soon," said Mrs.
Nathaniel, with a long breath. "Lucinda has spoken to Romney
AT LAST."
"Oh, WHAT do you suppose she said to him?" cried Mrs. George.
"My dear Cecilia," said Mrs. Frederick, "we shall never know."
They never did know.
VI. Old Man Shaw's Girl
"Day after to-morrow--day after to-morrow," said Old Man Shaw,
rubbing his long slender hands together gleefully. "I have to
keep saying it over and over, so as to really believe it. It
seems far too good to be true that I'm to have Blossom again.
And everything is ready. Yes, I think everything is ready,
except a bit of cooking. And won't this orchard be a surprise
to her! I'm just going to bring her out here as soon as I can,
never saying a word. I'll fetch her through the spruce lane,
and when we come to the end of the path I'll step back casual-
like, and let her go out from under the trees alone, never
suspecting. It'll be worth ten times the trouble to see her
big, brown eyes open wide and hear her say, 'Oh, daddy! Why,
daddy!'"
He rubbed his hands again and laughed softly to himself. He
was a tall, bent old man, whose hair was snow white, but whose
face was fresh and rosy. His eyes were a boy's eyes, large,
blue and merry, and his mouth had never got over a youthful
trick of smiling at any provocation--and, oft-times, at no
provocation at all.
To be sure, White Sands people would not have given you the
most favourable opinion in the world of Old Man Shaw. First
and foremost, they would have told you that he was
"shiftless," and had let his bit of a farm run out while he
pottered with flowers and bugs, or rambled aimlessly about in
the woods, or read books along the shore. Perhaps it was true;
but the old farm yielded him a living, and further than that
Old Man Shaw had no ambition. He was as blithe as a pilgrim on
a pathway climbing to the west. He had learned the rare secret
that you must take happiness when you find it--that there is
no use in marking the place and coming back to it at a more
convenient season, because it will not be there then. And it
is very easy to be happy if you know, as Old Man Shaw most
thoroughly knew, how to find pleasure in little things. He
enjoyed life, he had always enjoyed life and helped others to
enjoy it; consequently his life was a success, whatever White
Sands people might think of it. What if he had not "improved"
his farm? There are some people to whom life will never be
anything more than a kitchen garden; and there are others to
whom it will always be a royal palace with domes and minarets
of rainbow fancy.
The orchard of which he was so proud was as yet little more
than the substance of things hoped for--a flourishing
plantation of young trees which would amount to something
later on. Old Man Shaw's house was on the crest of a bare,
sunny hill, with a few staunch old firs and spruces behind it-
-the only trees that could resist the full sweep of the winds
that blew bitterly up from the sea at times. Fruit trees would
never grow near it, and this had been a great grief to Sara.
"Oh, daddy, if we could just have an orchard!" she had been
wont to say wistfully, when other farmhouses in White Sands
were smothered whitely in apple bloom. And when she had gone
away, and her father had nothing to look forward to save her
return, he was determined she should find an orchard when she
came back.
Over the southward hill, warmly sheltered by spruce woods and
sloping to the sunshine, was a little field, so fertile that
all the slack management of a life-time had not availed to
exhaust it. Here Old Man Shaw set out his orchard and saw it
flourish, watching and tending it until he came to know each
tree as a child and loved it. His neighbours laughed at him,
and said that the fruit of an orchard so far away from the
house would all be stolen. But as yet there was no fruit, and
when the time came for bearing there would be enough and to
spare.
"Blossom and me'll get all we want, and the boys can have the
rest, if they want 'em worse'n they want a good conscience,"
said that unworldly, unbusinesslike Old Man Shaw.
On his way back home from his darling orchard he found a rare
fern in the woods and dug it up for Sara--she had loved ferns.
He planted it at the shady, sheltered side of the house and
then sat down on the old bench by the garden gate to read her
last letter--the letter that was only a note, because she was
coming home soon. He knew every word of it by heart, but that
did not spoil the pleasure of re-reading it every half-hour.
Old Man Shaw had not married until late in life, and had, so
White Sands people said, selected a wife with his usual
judgment--which, being interpreted, meant no judgment at all;
otherwise, he would never have married Sara Glover, a mere
slip of a girl, with big brown eyes like a frightened wood
creature's, and the delicate, fleeting bloom of a spring
Mayflower.
"The last woman in the world for a farmer's wife--no strength
or get-up about her."
Neither could White Sands folk understand what on earth Sara
Glover had married him for.
"Well, the fool crop was the only one that never failed."
Old Man Shaw--he was Old Man Shaw even then, although he was
only forty--and his girl bride had troubled themselves not at
all about White Sands opinions. They had one year of perfect
happiness, which is always worth living for, even if the rest
of life be a dreary pilgrimage, and then Old Man Shaw found
himself alone again, except for little Blossom. She was
christened Sara, after her dead mother, but she was always
Blossom to her father--the precious little blossom whose
plucking had cost the mother her life.
Sara Glover's people, especially a wealthy aunt in Montreal,
had wanted to take the child, but Old Man Shaw grew almost
fierce over the suggestion. He would give his baby to no one.
A woman was hired to look after the house, but it was the
father who cared for the baby in the main. He was as tender
and faithful and deft as a woman. Sara never missed a mother's
care, and she grew up into a creature of life and light and
beauty, a constant delight to all who knew her. She had a way
of embroidering life with stars. She was dowered with all the
charming characteristics of both parents, with a resilient
vitality and activity which had pertained to neither of them.
When she was ten years old she had packed all hirelings off,
and kept house for her father for six delightful years--years
in which they were father and daughter, brother and sister,
and "chums." Sara never went to school, but her father saw to
her education after a fashion of his own. When their work was
done they lived in the woods and fields, in the little garden
they had made on the sheltered side of the house, or on the
shore, where sunshine and storm were to them equally lovely
and beloved. Never was comradeship more perfect or more wholly
satisfactory.
"Just wrapped up in each other," said White Sands folk, half-
enviously, half-disapprovingly.
When Sara was sixteen Mrs. Adair, the wealthy aunt aforesaid,
pounced down on White Sands in a glamour of fashion and
culture and outer worldliness. She bombarded Old Man Shaw with
such arguments that he had to succumb. It was a shame that a
girl like Sara should grow up in a place like White Sands,
"with no advantages and no education," said Mrs. Adair
scornfully, not understanding that wisdom and knowledge are
two entirely different things.
"At least let me give my dear sister's child what I would have
given my own daughter if I had had one," she pleaded
tearfully. "Let me take her with me and send her to a good
school for a few years. Then, if she wishes, she may come back
to you, of course."
Privately, Mrs. Adair did not for a moment believe that Sara
would want to come back to White Sands, and her queer old
father, after three years of the life she would give her.
Old Man Shaw yielded, influenced thereto not at all by Mrs.
Adair's readily flowing tears, but greatly by his conviction
that justice to Sara demanded it. Sara herself did not want to
go; she protested and pleaded; but her father, having become
convinced that it was best for her to go, was inexorable.
Everything, even her own feelings, must give way to that. But
she was to come back to him without let or hindrance when her
"schooling" was done. It was only on having this most clearly
understood that Sara would consent to go at all. Her last
words, called back to her father through her tears as she and
her aunt drove down the lane, were,
"I'll be back, daddy. In three years I'll be back. Don't cry,
but just look forward to that."
He had looked forward to it through the three long, lonely
years that followed, in all of which he never saw his darling.
Half a continent was between them and Mrs. Adair had vetoed
vacation visits, under some specious pretense. But every week
brought its letter from Sara. Old Man Shaw had every one of
them, tied up with one of her old blue hair ribbons, and kept
in her mother's little rose-wood work-box in the parlour. He
spent every Sunday afternoon re-reading them, with her
photograph before him. He lived alone, refusing to be pestered
with kind help, but he kept the house in beautiful order.
"A better housekeeper than farmer," said White Sands people.
He would have nothing altered. When Sara came back she was not
to be hurt by changes. It never occurred to him that she might
be changed herself.
And now those three interminable years were gone, and Sara was
coming home. She wrote him nothing of her aunt's pleadings and
reproaches and ready, futile tears; she wrote only that she
would graduate in June and start for home a week later.
Thenceforth Old Man Shaw went about in a state of beatitude,
making ready for her homecoming. As he sat on the bench in the
sunshine, with the blue sea sparkling and crinkling down at
the foot of the green slope, he reflected with satisfaction
that all was in perfect order. There was nothing left to do
save count the hours until that beautiful, longed-for day
after to-morrow. He gave himself over to a reverie, as sweet
as a day-dream in a haunted valley.
The red roses were out in bloom. Sara had always loved those
red roses--they were as vivid as herself, with all her own
fullness of life and joy of living. And, besides these, a
miracle had happened in Old Man Shaw's garden. In one corner
was a rose-bush which had never bloomed, despite all the
coaxing they had given it--"the sulky rose-bush," Sara had
been wont to call it. Lo! this summer had flung the hoarded
sweetness of years into plentiful white blossoms, like shallow
ivory cups with a haunting, spicy fragrance. It was in honour
of Sara's home-coming--so Old Man Shaw liked to fancy. All
things, even the sulky rose-bush, knew she was coming back,
and were making glad because of it.
He was gloating over Sara's letter when Mrs. Peter Blewett
came. She told him she had run up to see how he was getting
on, and if he wanted anything seen to before Sara came.
"No'm, thank you, ma'am. Everything is attended to. I couldn't
let anyone else prepare for Blossom. Only to think, ma'am,
she'll be home the day after to-morrow. I'm just filled clear
through, body, soul, and spirit, with joy to think of having
my little Blossom at home again."
Mrs. Blewett smiled sourly. When Mrs. Blewett smiled it
foretokened trouble, and wise people had learned to have
sudden business elsewhere before the smile could be translated
into words. But Old Man Shaw had never learned to be wise
where Mrs. Blewett was concerned, although she had been his
nearest neighbour for years, and had pestered his life out
with advice and "neighbourly turns."
Mrs. Blewett was one with whom life had gone awry. The effect
on her was to render happiness to other people a personal
insult. She resented Old Man Shaw's beaming delight in his
daughter's return, and she "considered it her duty" to rub the
bloom off straightway.
"Do you think Sary'll be contented in White Sands now?" she
asked.
Old Man Shaw looked slightly bewildered.
"Of course she'll be contented," he said slowly. "Isn't it her
home? And ain't I here?"
Mrs. Blewett smiled again, with double distilled contempt for
such simplicity.
"Well, it's a good thing you're so sure of it, I suppose. If
'twas my daughter that was coming back to White Sands, after
three years of fashionable life among rich, stylish folks, and
at a swell school, I wouldn't have a minute's peace of mind.
I'd know perfectly well that she'd look down on everything
here, and be discontented and miserable."
"YOUR daughter might," said Old Man Shaw, with more sarcasm
than he had supposed he had possessed, "but Blossom won't."
Mrs. Blewett shrugged her sharp shoulders.
"Maybe not. It's to be hoped not, for both your sakes, I'm
sure. But I'd be worried if 'twas me. Sary's been living among
fine folks, and having a gay, exciting time, and it stands to
reason she'll think White Sands fearful lonesome and dull.
Look at Lauretta Bradley. She was up in Boston for just a
month last winter and she's never been able to endure White
Sands since."
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