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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chronicles of Avonlea, by Lucy Maud Montgomery
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Chronicles of Avonlea
Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
Posting Date: August 13, 2008 [EBook #1354]
Release Date: June, 1998
Last Updated: October 6, 2016
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRONICLES OF AVONLEA ***
Produced by Kjell Nedrelid
CHRONICLES OF AVONLEA
By L. M. Montgomery
TO THE MEMORY OF
Mrs. William A. Houston,
A DEAR FRIEND, WHO HAS GONE BEYOND
The unsung beauty hid
life’s common things below.
--Whittier
Contents
I. The Hurrying of Ludovic
II. Old Lady Lloyd
III. Each In His Own Tongue
IV. Little Joscelyn
V. The Winning of Lucinda
VI. Old Man Shaw’s Girl
VII. Aunt Olivia’s Beau
VIII. The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham’s
IX. Pa Sloane’s Purchase
X. The Courting of Prissy Strong
XI. The Miracle at Carmody
XII. The End of a Quarrel
CHRONICLES OF AVONLEA
I. The Hurrying of Ludovic
Anne Shirley was curled up on the window-seat of Theodora Dix’s
sitting-room one Saturday evening, looking dreamily afar at some fair
starland beyond the hills of sunset. Anne was visiting for a fortnight
of her vacation at Echo Lodge, where Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Irving were
spending the summer, and she often ran over to the old Dix homestead
to chat for awhile with Theodora. They had had their chat out, on this
particular evening, and Anne was giving herself over to the delight of
building an air-castle. She leaned her shapely head, with its braided
coronet of dark red hair, against the window-casing, and her gray eyes
were like the moonlight gleam of shadowy pools.
Then she saw Ludovic Speed coming down the lane. He was yet far from the
house, for the Dix lane was a long one, but Ludovic could be recognized
as far as he could be seen. No one else in Middle Grafton had such a
tall, gently-stooping, placidly-moving figure. In every kink and turn of
it there was an individuality all Ludovic’s own.
Anne roused herself from her dreams, thinking it would only be tactful
to take her departure. Ludovic was courting Theodora. Everyone in
Grafton knew that, or, if anyone were in ignorance of the fact, it was
not because he had not had time to find out. Ludovic had been coming
down that lane to see Theodora, in the same ruminating, unhastening
fashion, for fifteen years!
When Anne, who was slim and girlish and romantic, rose to go, Theodora,
who was plump and middle-aged and practical, said, with a twinkle in her
eye:
“There isn’t any hurry, child. Sit down and have your call out. You’ve
seen Ludovic coming down the lane, and, I suppose, you think you’ll be a
crowd. But you won’t. Ludovic rather likes a third person around, and
so do I. It spurs up the conversation as it were. When a man has been
coming to see you straight along, twice a week for fifteen years, you
get rather talked out by spells.”
Theodora never pretended to bashfulness where Ludovic was concerned.
She was not at all shy of referring to him and his dilatory courtship.
Indeed, it seemed to amuse her.
Anne sat down again and together they watched Ludovic coming down the
lane, gazing calmly about him at the lush clover fields and the blue
loops of the river winding in and out of the misty valley below.
Anne looked at Theodora’s placid, finely-moulded face and tried to
imagine what she herself would feel like if she were sitting there,
waiting for an elderly lover who had, seemingly, taken so long to make
up his mind. But even Anne’s imagination failed her for this.
“Anyway,” she thought, impatiently, “if I wanted him I think I’d find
some way of hurrying him up. Ludovic SPEED! Was there ever such a misfit
of a name? Such a name for such a man is a delusion and a snare.”
Presently Ludovic got to the house, but stood so long on the doorstep
in a brown study, gazing into the tangled green boskage of the cherry
orchard, that Theodora finally went and opened the door before he
knocked. As she brought him into the sitting-room she made a comical
grimace at Anne over his shoulder.
Ludovic smiled pleasantly at Anne. He liked her; she was the only young
girl he knew, for he generally avoided young girls--they made him feel
awkward and out of place. But Anne did not affect him in this fashion.
She had a way of getting on with all sorts of people, and, although they
had not known her very long, both Ludovic and Theodora looked upon her
as an old friend.
Ludovic was tall and somewhat ungainly, but his unhesitating placidity
gave him the appearance of a dignity that did not otherwise pertain to
him. He had a drooping, silky, brown moustache, and a little curly tuft
of imperial,--a fashion which was regarded as eccentric in Grafton,
where men had clean-shaven chins or went full-bearded. His eyes were
dreamy and pleasant, with a touch of melancholy in their blue depths.
He sat down in the big bulgy old armchair that had belonged to
Theodora’s father. Ludovic always sat there, and Anne declared that the
chair had come to look like him.
The conversation soon grew animated enough. Ludovic was a good talker
when he had somebody to draw him out. He was well read, and frequently
surprised Anne by his shrewd comments on men and matters out in the
world, of which only the faint echoes reached Deland River. He had also
a liking for religious arguments with Theodora, who did not care much
for politics or the making of history, but was avid of doctrines, and
read everything pertaining thereto. When the conversation drifted
into an eddy of friendly wrangling between Ludovic and Theodora over
Christian Science, Anne understood that her usefulness was ended for the
time being, and that she would not be missed.
“It’s star time and good-night time,” she said, and went away quietly.
But she had to stop to laugh when she was well out of sight of the
house, in a green meadow bestarred with the white and gold of daisies.
A wind, odour-freighted, blew daintily across it. Anne leaned against a
white birch tree in the corner and laughed heartily, as she was apt to
do whenever she thought of Ludovic and Theodora. To her eager youth,
this courtship of theirs seemed a very amusing thing. She liked Ludovic,
but allowed herself to be provoked with him.
“The dear, big, irritating goose!” she said aloud. “There never was such
a lovable idiot before. He’s just like the alligator in the old rhyme,
who wouldn’t go along, and wouldn’t keep still, but just kept bobbing up
and down.”
Two evenings later, when Anne went over to the Dix place, she and
Theodora drifted into a conversation about Ludovic. Theodora, who was
the most industrious soul alive, and had a mania for fancy work into
the bargain, was busying her smooth, plump fingers with a very elaborate
Battenburg lace centre-piece. Anne was lying back in a little rocker,
with her slim hands folded in her lap, watching Theodora. She realized
that Theodora was very handsome, in a stately, Juno-like fashion of
firm, white flesh, large, clearly-chiselled outlines, and great, cowey,
brown eyes. When Theodora was not smiling, she looked very imposing.
Anne thought it likely that Ludovic held her in awe.
“Did you and Ludovic talk about Christian Science ALL Saturday evening?”
she asked.
Theodora overflowed into a smile.
“Yes, and we even quarrelled over it. At least _I_ did. Ludovic wouldn’t
quarrel with anyone. You have to fight air when you spar with him. I
hate to square up to a person who won’t hit back.”
“Theodora,” said Anne coaxingly, “I am going to be curious and
impertinent. You can snub me if you like. Why don’t you and Ludovic get
married?”
Theodora laughed comfortably.
“That’s the question Grafton folks have been asking for quite a while,
I reckon, Anne. Well, I’d have no objection to marrying Ludovic. That’s
frank enough for you, isn’t it? But it’s not easy to marry a man unless
he asks you. And Ludovic has never asked me.”
“Is he too shy?” persisted Anne. Since Theodora was in the mood, she
meant to sift this puzzling affair to the bottom.
Theodora dropped her work and looked meditatively out over the green
slopes of the summer world.
“No, I don’t think it is that. Ludovic isn’t shy. It’s just his way--the
Speed way. The Speeds are all dreadfully deliberate. They spend
years thinking over a thing before they make up their minds to do it.
Sometimes they get so much in the habit of thinking about it that they
never get over it--like old Alder Speed, who was always talking of
going to England to see his brother, but never went, though there was
no earthly reason why he shouldn’t. They’re not lazy, you know, but they
love to take their time.”
“And Ludovic is just an aggravated case of Speedism,” suggested Anne.
“Exactly. He never hurried in his life. Why, he has been thinking for
the last six years of getting his house painted. He talks it over with
me every little while, and picks out the colour, and there the matter
stays. He’s fond of me, and he means to ask me to have him sometime. The
only question is--will the time ever come?”
“Why don’t you hurry him up?” asked Anne impatiently.
Theodora went back to her stitches with another laugh.
“If Ludovic could be hurried up, I’m not the one to do it. I’m too shy.
It sounds ridiculous to hear a woman of my age and inches say that, but
it is true. Of course, I know it’s the only way any Speed ever did make
out to get married. For instance, there’s a cousin of mine married to
Ludovic’s brother. I don’t say she proposed to him out and out, but,
mind you, Anne, it wasn’t far from it. I couldn’t do anything like that.
I DID try once. When I realized that I was getting sere and mellow, and
all the girls of my generation were going off on either hand, I tried to
give Ludovic a hint. But it stuck in my throat. And now I don’t mind. If
I don’t change Dix to Speed until I take the initiative, it will be Dix
to the end of life. Ludovic doesn’t realize that we are growing old, you
know. He thinks we are giddy young folks yet, with plenty of time before
us. That’s the Speed failing. They never find out they’re alive until
they’re dead.”
“You’re fond of Ludovic, aren’t you?” asked Anne, detecting a note of
real bitterness among Theodora’s paradoxes.
“Laws, yes,” said Theodora candidly. She did not think it worth while to
blush over so settled a fact. “I think the world and all of Ludovic. And
he certainly does need somebody to look after HIM. He’s neglected--he
looks frayed. You can see that for yourself. That old aunt of his looks
after his house in some fashion, but she doesn’t look after him. And
he’s coming now to the age when a man needs to be looked after and
coddled a bit. I’m lonesome here, and Ludovic is lonesome up there,
and it does seem ridiculous, doesn’t it? I don’t wonder that we’re the
standing joke of Grafton. Goodness knows, I laugh at it enough myself.
I’ve sometimes thought that if Ludovic could be made jealous it might
spur him along. But I never could flirt and there’s nobody to flirt with
if I could. Everybody hereabouts looks upon me as Ludovic’s property and
nobody would dream of interfering with him.”
“Theodora,” cried Anne, “I have a plan!”
“Now, what are you going to do?” exclaimed Theodora.
Anne told her. At first Theodora laughed and protested. In the end, she
yielded somewhat doubtfully, overborne by Anne’s enthusiasm.
“Well, try it, then,” she said, resignedly. “If Ludovic gets mad and
leaves me, I’ll be worse off than ever. But nothing venture, nothing
win. And there is a fighting chance, I suppose. Besides, I must admit
I’m tired of his dilly-dallying.”
Anne went back to Echo Lodge tingling with delight in her plot. She
hunted up Arnold Sherman, and told him what was required of him. Arnold
Sherman listened and laughed. He was an elderly widower, an intimate
friend of Stephen Irving, and had come down to spend part of the summer
with him and his wife in Prince Edward Island. He was handsome in a
mature style, and he had a dash of mischief in him still, so that he
entered readily enough into Anne’s plan. It amused him to think of
hurrying Ludovic Speed, and he knew that Theodora Dix could be depended
on to do her part. The comedy would not be dull, whatever its outcome.
The curtain rose on the first act after prayer meeting on the next
Thursday night. It was bright moonlight when the people came out of
church, and everybody saw it plainly. Arnold Sherman stood upon the
steps close to the door, and Ludovic Speed leaned up against a corner of
the graveyard fence, as he had done for years. The boys said he had worn
the paint off that particular place. Ludovic knew of no reason why he
should paste himself up against the church door. Theodora would come out
as usual, and he would join her as she went past the corner.
This was what happened, Theodora came down the steps, her stately figure
outlined in its darkness against the gush of lamplight from the porch.
Arnold Sherman asked her if he might see her home. Theodora took his arm
calmly, and together they swept past the stupefied Ludovic, who stood
helplessly gazing after them as if unable to believe his eyes.
For a few moments he stood there limply; then he started down the road
after his fickle lady and her new admirer. The boys and irresponsible
young men crowded after, expecting some excitement, but they were
disappointed. Ludovic strode on until he overtook Theodora and Arnold
Sherman, and then fell meekly in behind them.
Theodora hardly enjoyed her walk home, although Arnold Sherman laid
himself out to be especially entertaining. Her heart yearned after
Ludovic, whose shuffling footsteps she heard behind her. She feared that
she had been very cruel, but she was in for it now. She steeled herself
by the reflection that it was all for his own good, and she talked to
Arnold Sherman as if he were the one man in the world. Poor, deserted
Ludovic, following humbly behind, heard her, and if Theodora had known
how bitter the cup she was holding to his lips really was, she would
never have been resolute enough to present it, no matter for what
ultimate good.
When she and Arnold turned in at her gate, Ludovic had to stop. Theodora
looked over her shoulder and saw him standing still on the road. His
forlorn figure haunted her thoughts all night. If Anne had not run over
the next day and bolstered up her convictions, she might have spoiled
everything by prematurely relenting.
Ludovic, meanwhile, stood still on the road, quite oblivious to the
hoots and comments of the vastly amused small boy contingent, until
Theodora and his rival disappeared from his view under the firs in the
hollow of her lane. Then he turned about and went home, not with his
usual leisurely amble, but with a perturbed stride which proclaimed his
inward disquiet.
He felt bewildered. If the world had come suddenly to an end or if the
lazy, meandering Grafton River had turned about and flowed up hill,
Ludovic could not have been more astonished. For fifteen years he had
walked home from meetings with Theodora; and now this elderly stranger,
with all the glamour of “the States” hanging about him, had coolly
walked off with her under Ludovic’s very nose. Worse--most unkindest
cut of all--Theodora had gone with him willingly; nay, she had evidently
enjoyed his company. Ludovic felt the stirring of a righteous anger in
his easy-going soul.
When he reached the end of his lane, he paused at his gate, and looked
at his house, set back from the lane in a crescent of birches. Even in
the moonlight, its weather-worn aspect was plainly visible. He thought
of the “palatial residence” rumour ascribed to Arnold Sherman in Boston,
and stroked his chin nervously with his sunburnt fingers. Then he
doubled up his fist and struck it smartly on the gate-post.
“Theodora needn’t think she is going to jilt me in this fashion,
after keeping company with me for fifteen years,” he said. “I’LL
have something to say to it, Arnold Sherman or no Arnold Sherman. The
impudence of the puppy!”
The next morning Ludovic drove to Carmody and engaged Joshua Pye to
come and paint his house, and that evening, although he was not due till
Saturday night, he went down to see Theodora.
Arnold Sherman was there before him, and was actually sitting in
Ludovic’s own prescriptive chair. Ludovic had to deposit himself in
Theodora’s new wicker rocker, where he looked and felt lamentably out of
place.
If Theodora felt the situation to be awkward, she carried it off
superbly. She had never looked handsomer, and Ludovic perceived that she
wore her second best silk dress. He wondered miserably if she had donned
it in expectation of his rival’s call. She had never put on silk dresses
for him. Ludovic had always been the meekest and mildest of mortals, but
he felt quite murderous as he sat mutely there and listened to Arnold
Sherman’s polished conversation.
“You should just have been here to see him glowering,” Theodora told the
delighted Anne the next day. “It may be wicked of me, but I felt real
glad. I was afraid he might stay away and sulk. So long as he comes here
and sulks I don’t worry. But he is feeling badly enough, poor soul, and
I’m really eaten up by remorse. He tried to outstay Mr. Sherman last
night, but he didn’t manage it. You never saw a more depressed-looking
creature than he was as he hurried down the lane. Yes, he actually
hurried.”
The following Sunday evening Arnold Sherman walked to church with
Theodora, and sat with her. When they came in Ludovic Speed suddenly
stood up in his pew under the gallery. He sat down again at once, but
everybody in view had seen him, and that night folks in all the length
and breadth of Grafton River discussed the dramatic occurrence with keen
enjoyment.
“Yes, he jumped right up as if he was pulled on his feet, while the
minister was reading the chapter,” said his cousin, Lorella Speed, who
had been in church, to her sister, who had not. “His face was as white
as a sheet, and his eyes were just glaring out of his head. I never felt
so thrilled, I declare! I almost expected him to fly at them then and
there. But he just gave a sort of gasp and set down again. I don’t know
whether Theodora Dix saw him or not. She looked as cool and unconcerned
as you please.”
Theodora had not seen Ludovic, but if she looked cool and unconcerned,
her appearance belied her, for she felt miserably flustered. She could
not prevent Arnold Sherman coming to church with her, but it seemed to
her like going too far. People did not go to church and sit together in
Grafton unless they were the next thing to being engaged. What if this
filled Ludovic with the narcotic of despair instead of wakening him
up! She sat through the service in misery and heard not one word of the
sermon.
But Ludovic’s spectacular performances were not yet over. The Speeds
might be hard to get started, but once they were started their momentum
was irresistible. When Theodora and Mr. Sherman came out, Ludovic was
waiting on the steps. He stood up straight and stern, with his head
thrown back and his shoulders squared. There was open defiance in the
look he cast on his rival, and masterfulness in the mere touch of the
hand he laid on Theodora’s arm.
“May I see you home, Miss Dix?” his words said. His tone said, “I am
going to see you home whether or no.”
Theodora, with a deprecating look at Arnold Sherman, took his arm,
and Ludovic marched her across the green amid a silence which the very
horses tied to the storm fence seemed to share. For Ludovic ‘twas a
crowded hour of glorious life.
Anne walked all the way over from Avonlea the next day to hear the news.
Theodora smiled consciously.
“Yes, it is really settled at last, Anne. Coming home last night Ludovic
asked me plump and plain to marry him,--Sunday and all as it was.
It’s to be right away--for Ludovic won’t be put off a week longer than
necessary.”
“So Ludovic Speed has been hurried up to some purpose at last,” said Mr.
Sherman, when Anne called in at Echo Lodge, brimful with her news. “And
you are delighted, of course, and my poor pride must be the scapegoat. I
shall always be remembered in Grafton as the man from Boston who wanted
Theodora Dix and couldn’t get her.”
“But that won’t be true, you know,” said Anne comfortingly.
Arnold Sherman thought of Theodora’s ripe beauty, and the mellow
companionableness she had revealed in their brief intercourse.
“I’m not perfectly sure of that,” he said, with a half sigh.
II. Old Lady Lloyd
I. The May Chapter
Spencervale gossip always said that “Old Lady Lloyd” was rich and mean
and proud. Gossip, as usual, was one-third right and two-thirds wrong.
Old Lady Lloyd was neither rich nor mean; in reality she was pitifully
poor--so poor that “Crooked Jack” Spencer, who dug her garden and
chopped her wood for her, was opulent by contrast, for he, at least,
never lacked three meals a day, and the Old Lady could sometimes achieve
no more than one. But she WAS very proud--so proud that she would have
died rather than let the Spencervale people, among whom she had queened
it in her youth, suspect how poor she was and to what straits was
sometimes reduced. She much preferred to have them think her miserly and
odd--a queer old recluse who never went anywhere, even to church, and
who paid the smallest subscription to the minister’s salary of anyone in
the congregation.
“And her just rolling in wealth!” they said indignantly. “Well, she
didn’t get her miserly ways from her parents. THEY were real generous
and neighbourly. There never was a finer gentleman than old Doctor
Lloyd. He was always doing kindnesses to everybody; and he had a way of
doing them that made you feel as if you was doing the favour, not him.
Well, well, let Old Lady Lloyd keep herself and her money to herself
if she wants to. If she doesn’t want our company, she doesn’t have to
suffer it, that’s all. Reckon she isn’t none too happy for all her money
and pride.”
No, the Old Lady was none too happy, that was unfortunately true. It
is not easy to be happy when your life is eaten up with loneliness and
emptiness on the spiritual side, and when, on the material side, all you
have between you and starvation is the little money your hens bring you
in.
The Old Lady lived “away back at the old Lloyd place,” as it was always
called. It was a quaint, low-eaved house, with big chimneys and square
windows and with spruces growing thickly all around it. The Old Lady
lived there all alone and there were weeks at a time when she never saw
a human being except Crooked Jack. What the Old Lady did with herself
and how she put in her time was a puzzle the Spencervale people could
not solve. The children believed she amused herself counting the gold in
the big black box under her bed. Spencervale children held the Old Lady
in mortal terror; some of them--the “Spencer Road” fry--believed she
was a witch; all of them would run if, when wandering about the woods
in search of berries or spruce gum, they saw at a distance the spare,
upright form of the Old Lady, gathering sticks for her fire. Mary Moore
was the only one who was quite sure she was not a witch.
“Witches are always ugly,” she said decisively, “and Old Lady Lloyd
isn’t ugly. She’s real pretty--she’s got such a soft white hair and big
black eyes and a little white face. Those Road children don’t know what
they’re talking of. Mother says they’re a very ignorant crowd.”
“Well, she doesn’t ever go to church, and she mutters and talks to
herself all the time she’s picking up sticks,” maintained Jimmy Kimball
stoutly.
The Old Lady talked to herself because she was really very fond of
company and conversation. To be sure, when you have talked to nobody but
yourself for nearly twenty years, it is apt to grow somewhat monotonous;
and there were times when the Old Lady would have sacrificed everything
but her pride for a little human companionship. At such times she felt
very bitter and resentful toward Fate for having taken everything
from her. She had nothing to love, and that is about as unwholesome a
condition as is possible to anyone.
It was always hardest in the spring. Once upon a time the Old Lady--when
she had not been the Old Lady, but pretty, wilful, high-spirited
Margaret Lloyd--had loved springs; now she hated them because they hurt
her; and this particular spring of this particular May chapter hurt her
more than any that had gone before. The Old Lady felt as if she could
NOT endure the ache of it. Everything hurt her--the new green tips on
the firs, the fairy mists down in the little beech hollow below the
house, the fresh smell of the red earth Crooked Jack spaded up in her
garden. The Old Lady lay awake all one moonlit night and cried for very
heartache. She even forgot her body hunger in her soul hunger; and the
Old Lady had been hungry, more or less, all that week. She was living on
store biscuits and water, so that she might be able to pay Crooked Jack
for digging her garden. When the pale, lovely dawn-colour came stealing
up the sky behind the spruces, the Old Lady buried her face in her
pillow and refused to look at it.
“I hate the new day,” she said rebelliously. “It will be just like all
the other hard, common days. I don’t want to get up and live it. And,
oh, to think that long ago I reached out my hands joyfully to every
new day, as to a friend who was bringing me good tidings! I loved the
mornings then--sunny or gray, they were as delightful as an unread
book--and now I hate them--hate them--hate them!”
But the Old Lady got up nevertheless, for she knew Crooked Jack would
be coming early to finish the garden. She arranged her beautiful, thick,
white hair very carefully, and put on her purple silk dress with the
little gold spots in it. The Old Lady always wore silk from motives of
economy. It was much cheaper to wear a silk dress that had belonged to
her mother than to buy new print at the store. The Old Lady had plenty
of silk dresses which had belonged to her mother. She wore them morning,
noon, and night, and Spencervale people considered it an additional
evidence of her pride. As for the fashion of them, it was, of course,
just because she was too mean to have them made over. They did not dream
that the Old Lady never put on one of the silk dresses without agonizing
over its unfashionableness, and that even the eyes of Crooked Jack cast
on her antique flounces and overskirts was almost more than her feminine
vanity could endure.
In spite of the fact that the Old Lady had not welcomed the new day, its
beauty charmed her when she went out for a walk after her dinner--or,
rather, after her mid-day biscuit. It was so fresh, so sweet, so virgin;
and the spruce woods around the old Lloyd place were athrill with busy
spring doings and all sprinkled through with young lights and shadows.
Some of their delight found its way into the Old Lady’s bitter heart
as she wandered through them, and when she came out at the little plank
bridge over the brook down under the beeches, she felt almost gentle and
tender once more. There was one big beech there, in particular, which
the Old Lady loved for reasons best known to herself--a great, tall
beech with a trunk like the shaft of a gray marble column and a leafy
spread of branches over the still, golden-brown pool made beneath it by
the brook. It had been a young sapling in the days that were haloed by
the vanished glory of the Old Lady’s life.
The Old Lady heard childish voices and laughter afar up the lane which
led to William Spencer’s place just above the woods. William Spencer’s
front lane ran out to the main road in a different direction, but this
“back lane” furnished a short cut and his children always went to school
that way.
The Old Lady shrank hastily back behind a clump of young spruces. She
did not like the Spencer children because they always seemed so afraid
of her. Through the spruce screen she could see them coming gaily down
the lane--the two older ones in front, the twins behind, clinging to the
hands of a tall, slim, young girl--the new music teacher, probably. The
Old Lady had heard from the egg pedlar that she was going to board at
William Spencer’s, but she had not heard her name.
She looked at her with some curiosity as they drew near--and then, all
at once, the Old Lady’s heart gave a great bound and began to beat as it
had not beaten for years, while her breath came quickly and she trembled
violently. Who--WHO could this girl be?
Under the new music teacher’s straw hat were masses of fine chestnut
hair of the very shade and wave that the Old Lady remembered on another
head in vanished years; from under those waves looked large, violet-blue
eyes with very black lashes and brows--and the Old Lady knew those eyes
as well as she knew her own; and the new music teacher’s face, with all
its beauty of delicate outline and dainty colouring and glad, buoyant
youth, was a face from the Old Lady’s past--a perfect resemblance in
every respect save one; the face which the Old Lady remembered had
been weak, with all its charm; but this girl’s face possessed a fine,
dominant strength compact of sweetness and womanliness. As she passed by
the Old Lady’s hiding place she laughed at something one of the children
said; and oh, but the Old Lady knew that laughter well. She had heard it
before under that very beech tree.
She watched them until they disappeared over the wooded hill beyond the
bridge; and then she went back home as if she walked in a dream. Crooked
Jack was delving vigorously in the garden; ordinarily the Old Lady
did not talk much with Crooked Jack, for she disliked his weakness for
gossip; but now she went into the garden, a stately old figure in her
purple, gold-spotted silk, with the sunshine gleaming on her white hair.
Crooked Jack had seen her go out and had remarked to himself that the
Old Lady was losing ground; she was pale and peaked-looking. He now
concluded that he had been mistaken. The Old Lady’s cheeks were pink and
her eyes shining. Somewhere in her walk she had shed ten years at least.
Crooked Jack leaned on his spade and decided that there weren’t many
finer looking women anywhere than Old Lady Lloyd. Pity she was such an
old miser!
“Mr. Spencer,” said the Old Lady graciously--she always spoke very
graciously to her inferiors when she talked to them at all--“can you
tell me the name of the new music teacher who is boarding at Mr. William
Spencer’s?”
“Sylvia Gray,” said Crooked Jack.
The Old Lady’s heart gave another great bound. But she had known it--she
had known that girl with Leslie Gray’s hair and eyes and laugh must be
Leslie Gray’s daughter.
Crooked Jack spat on his hand and resumed his work, but his tongue went
faster than his spade, and the Old Lady listened greedily. For the first
time she enjoyed and blessed Crooked Jack’s garrulity and gossip. Every
word he uttered was as an apple of gold in a picture of silver to her.
He had been working at William Spencer’s the day the new music teacher
had come, and what Crooked Jack couldn’t find out about any person in
one whole day--at least as far as outward life went--was hardly worth
finding out. Next to discovering things did he love telling them, and it
would be hard to say which enjoyed that ensuing half-hour more--Crooked
Jack or the Old Lady.
Crooked Jack’s account, boiled down, amounted to this; both Miss Gray’s
parents had died when she was a baby, she had been brought up by an
aunt, she was very poor and very ambitious.
“Wants a moosical eddication,” finished up Crooked Jack, “and, by jingo,
she orter have it, for anything like the voice of her I never heerd.
She sung for us that evening after supper and I thought ‘twas an angel
singing. It just went through me like a shaft o’ light. The Spencer
young ones are crazy over her already. She’s got twenty pupils around
here and in Grafton and Avonlea.”
When the Old Lady had found out everything Crooked Jack could tell
her, she went into the house and sat down by the window of her little
sitting-room to think it all over. She was tingling from head to foot
with excitement.
Leslie’s daughter! This Old Lady had had her romance once. Long
ago--forty years ago--she had been engaged to Leslie Gray, a young
college student who taught in Spencervale for the summer term one
year--the golden summer of Margaret Lloyd’s life. Leslie had been a
shy, dreamy, handsome fellow with literary ambitions, which, as he and
Margaret both firmly believed, would one day bring him fame and fortune.
Then there had been a foolish, bitter quarrel at the end of that golden
summer. Leslie had gone away in anger, afterwards he had written, but
Margaret Lloyd, still in the grasp of her pride and resentment, had sent
a harsh answer. No more letters came; Leslie Gray never returned; and
one day Margaret wakened to the realization that she had put love out of
her life for ever. She knew it would never be hers again; and from that
moment her feet were turned from youth to walk down the valley of shadow
to a lonely, eccentric age.
Many years later she heard of Leslie’s marriage; then came news of his
death, after a life that had not fulfilled his dreams for him. Nothing
more she had heard or known--nothing to this day, when she had seen his
daughter pass her by unseeing in the beech hollow.
“His daughter! And she might have been MY daughter,” murmured the Old
Lady. “Oh, if I could only know her and love her--and perhaps win her
love in return! But I cannot. I could not have Leslie Gray’s daughter
know how poor I am--how low I have been brought. I could not bear that.
And to think she is living so near me, the darling--just up the lane
and over the hill. I can see her go by every day--I can have that dear
pleasure, at least. But oh, if I could only do something for her--give
her some little pleasure! It would be such a delight.”
When the Old Lady happened to go into her spare room that evening, she
saw from it a light shining through a gap in the trees on the hill. She
knew that it shone from the Spencers’ spare room. So it was Sylvia’s
light. The Old Lady stood in the darkness and watched it until it went
out--watched it with a great sweetness breathing in her heart, such as
risen from old rose-leaves when they are stirred. She fancied Sylvia
moving about her room, brushing and braiding her long, glistening
hair--laying aside her little trinkets and girlish adornments--making
her simple preparations for sleep. When the light went out the Old
Lady pictured a slight white figure kneeling by the window in the soft
starshine, and the Old Lady knelt down then and there and said her own
prayers in fellowship. She said the simple form of words she had always
used; but a new spirit seemed to inspire them; and she finished with
a new petition--“Let me think of something I can do for her, dear
Father--some little, little thing that I can do for her.”
The Old Lady had slept in the same room all her life--the one looking
north into the spruces--and loved it; but the next day she moved into
the spare room without a regret. It was to be her room after this; she
must be where she could see Sylvia’s light, she put the bed where she
could lie in it and look at that earth star which had suddenly shone
across the twilight shadows of her heart. She felt very happy, she
had not felt happy for many years; but now a strange, new, dream-like
interest, remote from the harsh realities of her existence, but none the
less comforting and alluring, had entered into her life. Besides, she
had thought of something she could do for Sylvia--“a little, little
thing” that might give her pleasure.
Spencervale people were wont to say regretfully that there were no
Mayflowers in Spencervale; the Spencervale young fry, when they wanted
Mayflowers, thought they had to go over to the barrens at Avonlea, six
miles away, for them. Old Lady Lloyd knew better. In her many long,
solitary rambles, she had discovered a little clearing far back in the
woods--a southward-sloping, sandy hill on a tract of woodland belonging
to a man who lived in town--which in spring was starred over with the
pink and white of arbutus.
To this clearing the Old Lady betook herself that afternoon, walking
through wood lanes and under dim spruce arches like a woman with a glad
purpose. All at once the spring was dear and beautiful to her once more;
for love had entered again into her heart, and her starved soul was
feasting on its divine nourishment.
Old Lady Lloyd found a wealth of Mayflowers on the sandy hill. She
filled her basket with them, gloating over the loveliness which was to
give pleasure to Sylvia. When she got home she wrote on a slip of paper,
“For Sylvia.” It was not likely anyone in Spencervale would know her
handwriting, but, to make sure, she disguised it, writing in round, big
letters like a child’s. She carried her Mayflowers down to the hollow
and heaped them in a recess between the big roots of the old beech, with
the little note thrust through a stem on top.
Then the Old Lady deliberately hid behind the spruce clump. She had put
on her dark green silk on purpose for hiding. She had not long to
wait. Soon Sylvia Gray came down the hill with Mattie Spencer. When she
reached the bridge she saw the Mayflowers and gave an exclamation of
delight. Then she saw her name and her expression changed to wonder.
The Old Lady, peering through the boughs, could have laughed for very
pleasure over the success of her little plot.
“For me!” said Sylvia, lifting the flowers. “CAN they really be for me,
Mattie? Who could have left them here?”
Mattie giggled.
“I believe it was Chris Stewart,” she said. “I know he was over at
Avonlea last night. And ma says he’s taken a notion to you--she knows
by the way he looked at you when you were singing night before last. It
would be just like him to do something queer like this--he’s such a shy
fellow with the girls.”
Sylvia frowned a little. She did not like Mattie’s expressions, but
she did like Mayflowers, and she did not dislike Chris Stewart, who had
seemed to her merely a nice, modest, country boy. She lifted the flowers
and buried her face in them.
“Anyway, I’m much obliged to the giver, whoever he or she is,” she said
merrily. “There’s nothing I love like Mayflowers. Oh, how sweet they
are!”
When they had passed the Old Lady emerged from her lurking place,
flushed with triumph. It did not vex her that Sylvia should think Chris
Stewart had given her the flowers; nay, it was all the better, since she
would be the less likely to suspect the real donor. The main thing was
that Sylvia should have the delight of them. That quite satisfied the
Old Lady, who went back to her lonely house with the cockles of her
heart all in a glow.
It soon was a matter of gossip in Spencervale that Chris Stewart was
leaving Mayflowers at the beech hollow for the music teacher every other
day. Chris himself denied it, but he was not believed. Firstly, there
were no Mayflowers in Spencervale; secondly, Chris had to go to Carmody
every other day to haul milk to the butter factory, and Mayflowers grew
in Carmody, and, thirdly, the Stewarts always had a romantic streak in
them. Was not that enough circumstantial evidence for anybody?
As for Sylvia, she did not mind if Chris had a boyish admiration for
her and expressed it thus delicately. She thought it very nice of him,
indeed, when he did not vex her with any other advances, and she was
quite content to enjoy his Mayflowers.
Old Lady Lloyd heard all the gossip about it from the egg pedlar, and
listened to him with laughter glimmering far down in her eyes. The egg
pedlar went away and vowed he’d never seen the Old Lady so spry as she
was this spring; she seemed real interested in the young folk’s doings.
The Old Lady kept her secret and grew young in it. She walked back to
the Mayflower hill as long as the Mayflowers lasted; and she always hid
in the spruces to see Sylvia Gray go by. Every day she loved her more,
and yearned after her more deeply. All the long repressed tenderness of
her nature overflowed to this girl who was unconscious of it. She was
proud of Sylvia’s grace and beauty, and sweetness of voice and laughter.
She began to like the Spencer children because they worshipped Sylvia;
she envied Mrs. Spencer because the latter could minister to Sylvia’s
needs. Even the egg pedlar seemed a delightful person because he brought
news of Sylvia--her social popularity, her professional success, the
love and admiration she had won already.
The Old Lady never dreamed of revealing herself to Sylvia. That, in her
poverty, was not to be thought of for a moment. It would have been very
sweet to know her--sweet to have her come to the old house--sweet to
talk to her--to enter into her life. But it might not be. The Old Lady’s
pride was still far stronger than her love. It was the one thing she had
never sacrificed and never--so she believed--could sacrifice.
II. The June Chapter
There were no Mayflowers in June; but now the Old Lady’s garden was
full of blossoms and every morning Sylvia found a bouquet of them by the
beech--the perfumed ivory of white narcissus, the flame of tulips, the
fairy branches of bleeding-heart, the pink-and-snow of little,
thorny, single, sweetbreathed early roses. The Old Lady had no fear of
discovery, for the flowers that grew in her garden grew in every other
Spencervale garden as well, including the Stewart garden. Chris Stewart,
when he was teased about the music teacher, merely smiled and held
his peace. Chris knew perfectly well who was the real giver of those
flowers. He had made it his business to find out when the Mayflower
gossip started. But since it was evident Old Lady Lloyd did not wish it
to be known, Chris told no one. Chris had always liked Old Lady Lloyd
ever since the day, ten years before, when she had found him crying in
the woods with a cut foot and had taken him into her house, and bathed
and bound the wound, and given him ten cents to buy candy at the store.
The Old Lady went without supper that night because of it, but Chris
never knew that.
The Old Lady thought it a most beautiful June. She no longer hated the
new days; on the contrary, she welcomed them.
“Every day is an uncommon day now,” she said jubilantly to herself--for
did not almost every day bring her a glimpse of Sylvia? Even on rainy
days the Old Lady gallantly braved rheumatism to hide behind her clump
of dripping spruces and watch Sylvia pass. The only days she could not
see her were Sundays; and no Sundays had ever seemed so long to Old Lady
Lloyd as those June Sundays did.
One day the egg pedlar had news for her.
“The music teacher is going to sing a solo for a collection piece
to-morrow,” he told her.
The Old Lady’s black eyes flashed with interest.
“I didn’t know Miss Gray was a member of the choir,” she said.
“Jined two Sundays ago. I tell you, our music is something worth
listening to now. The church’ll be packed to-morrow, I reckon--her
name’s gone all over the country for singing. You ought to come and hear
it, Miss Lloyd.”
The pedlar said this out of bravado, merely to show he wasn’t scared of
the Old Lady, for all her grand airs. The Old Lady made no answer, and
he thought he had offended her. He went away, wishing he hadn’t said it.
Had he but known it, the Old Lady had forgotten the existence of all and
any egg pedlars. He had blotted himself and his insignificance out of
her consciousness by his last sentence. All her thoughts, feelings, and
wishes were submerged in a very whirlpool of desire to hear Sylvia sing
that solo. She went into the house in a tumult and tried to conquer that
desire. She could not do it, even thought she summoned all her pride to
her aid. Pride said:
“You will have to go to church to hear her. You haven’t fit clothes to
go to church in. Think what a figure you will make before them all.”
But, for the first time, a more insistent voice than pride spoke to her
soul--and, for the first time, the Old Lady listened to it. It was too
true that she had never gone to church since the day on which she had
to begin wearing her mother’s silk dresses. The Old Lady herself thought
that this was very wicked; and she tried to atone by keeping Sunday very
strictly, and always having a little service of her own, morning and
evening. She sang three hymns in her cracked voice, prayed aloud, and
read a sermon. But she could not bring herself to go to church in her
out-of-date clothes--she, who had once set the fashions in Spencervale,
and the longer she stayed away, the more impossible it seemed that she
should ever again go. Now the impossible had become, not only possible,
but insistent. She must go to church and hear Sylvia sing, no matter how
ridiculous she appeared, no matter how people talked and laughed at her.
Spencervale congregation had a mild sensation the next afternoon. Just
before the opening of service Old Lady Lloyd walked up the aisle and sat
down in the long-unoccupied Lloyd pew, in front of the pulpit.
The Old Lady’s very soul was writhing within her. She recalled the
reflection she had seen in her mirror before she left--the old black
silk in the mode of thirty years agone and the queer little bonnet of
shirred black satin. She thought how absurd she must look in the eyes of
her world.
As a matter of fact, she did not look in the least absurd. Some women
might have; but the Old Lady’s stately distinction of carriage and
figure was so subtly commanding that it did away with the consideration
of garmenting altogether.
The Old Lady did not know this. But she did know that Mrs. Kimball,
the storekeeper’s wife, presently rustled into the next pew in the very
latest fashion of fabric and mode; she and Mrs. Kimball were the same
age, and there had been a time when the latter had been content
to imitate Margaret Lloyd’s costumes at a humble distance. But the
storekeeper had proposed, and things were changed now; and there sat
poor Old Lady Lloyd, feeling the change bitterly, and half wishing she
had not come to church at all.
Then all at once the Angel of Love touched these foolish thoughts, born
of vanity and morbid pride, and they melted away as if they had never
been. Sylvia Gray had come into the choir, and was sitting just where
the afternoon sunshine fell over her beautiful hair like a halo. The Old
Lady looked at her in a rapture of satisfied longing and thenceforth the
service was blessed to her, as anything is blessed which comes through
the medium of unselfish love, whether human or divine. Nay, are they not
one and the same, differing in degree only, not in kind?
The Old Lady had never had such a good, satisfying look at Sylvia
before. All her former glimpses had been stolen and fleeting. Now
she sat and gazed upon her to her hungry heart’s content, lingering
delightedly over every little charm and loveliness--the way Sylvia’s
shining hair rippled back from her forehead, the sweet little trick she
had of dropping quickly her long-lashed eyelids when she encountered
too bold or curious a glance, and the slender, beautifully modelled
hands--so like Leslie Gray’s hands--that held her hymn book. She was
dressed very plainly in a black skirt and a white shirtwaist; but none
of the other girls in the choir, with all their fine feathers, could
hold a candle to her--as the egg pedlar said to his wife, going home
from church.
The Old Lady listened to the opening hymns with keen pleasure. Sylvia’s
voice thrilled through and dominated them all. But when the ushers got
up to take the collection, an undercurrent of subdued excitement flowed
over the congregation. Sylvia rose and came forward to Janet Moore’s
side at the organ. The next moment her beautiful voice soared through
the building like the very soul of melody--true, clear, powerful, sweet.
Nobody in Spencervale had ever listened to such a voice, except Old
Lady Lloyd herself, who, in her youth, had heard enough good singing to
enable her to be a tolerable judge of it. She realized instantly that
this girl of her heart had a great gift--a gift that would some day
bring her fame and fortune, if it could be duly trained and developed.
“Oh, I’m so glad I came to church,” thought Old Lady Lloyd.
When the solo was ended, the Old Lady’s conscience compelled her to drag
her eyes and thoughts from Sylvia, and fasten them on the minister,
who had been flattering himself all through the opening portion of the
service that Old Lady Lloyd had come to church on his account. He was
newly settled, having been in charge of the Spencervale congregation
only a few months; he was a clever little fellow and he honestly thought
it was the fame of his preaching that had brought Old Lady Lloyd out to
church.
When the service was over all the Old Lady’s neighbours came to speak
to her, with kindly smile and handshake. They thought they ought to
encourage her, now that she had made a start in the right direction; the
Old Lady liked their cordiality, and liked it none the less because she
detected in it the same unconscious respect and deference she had been
wont to receive in the old days--a respect and deference which her
personality compelled from all who approached her. The Old Lady was
surprised to find that she could command it still, in defiance of
unfashionable bonnet and ancient attire.
Janet Moore and Sylvia Gray walked home from church together. “Did you
see Old Lady Lloyd out to-day?” asked Janet. “I was amazed when she
walked in. She has never been to church in my recollection. What a
quaint old figure she is! She’s very rich, you know, but she wears her
mother’s old clothes and never gets a new thing. Some people think
she is mean; but,” concluded Janet charitably, “I believe it is simply
eccentricity.”
“I felt that was Miss Lloyd as soon as I saw her, although I had never
seen her before,” said Sylvia dreamily. “I have been wishing to see
her--for a certain reason. She has a very striking face. I should like
to meet her--to know her.”
“I don’t think it’s likely you ever will,” said Janet carelessly. “She
doesn’t like young people and she never goes anywhere. I don’t think I’d