Book: Rainbow Valley

L >> Lucy Maud Montgomery >> Rainbow Valley




"They say in school that Walter's a sissy," said Jerry.

"I don't believe it," said Una, who had thought Walter very
handsome.

"Well, he writes poetry, anyhow. He won the prize the teacher
offered last year for writing a poem, Bertie Shakespeare Drew
told me. Bertie's mother thought HE should have got the prize
because of his name, but Bertie said he couldn't write poetry to
save his soul, name or no name."

"I suppose we'll get acquainted with them as soon as they begin
going to school," mused Faith. "I hope the girls are nice. I
don't like most of the girls round here. Even the nice ones are
poky. But the Blythe twins look jolly. I thought twins always
looked alike, but they don't. I think the red-haired one is the
nicest."

"I liked their mother's looks," said Una with a little sigh. Una
envied all children their mothers. She had been only six when
her mother died, but she had some very precious memories,
treasured in her soul like jewels, of twilight cuddlings and
morning frolics, of loving eyes, a tender voice, and the
sweetest, gayest laugh.

"They say she isn't like other people," said Jerry.

"Mrs. Elliot says that is because she never really grew up," said
Faith.

"She's taller than Mrs. Elliott."

"Yes, yes, but it is inside--Mrs. Elliot says Mrs. Blythe just
stayed a little girl inside."

"What do I smell?" interrupted Carl, sniffing.

They all smelled it now. A most delectable odour came floating
up on the still evening air from the direction of the little
woodsy dell below the manse hill.

"That makes me hungry," said Jerry.

"We had only bread and molasses for supper and cold ditto for
dinner," said Una plaintively.

Aunt Martha's habit was to boil a large slab of mutton early in
the week and serve it up every day, cold and greasy, as long as
it lasted. To this Faith, in a moment of inspiration, had give
the name of "ditto", and by this it was invariably known at the
manse.

"Let's go and see where that smell is coming from," said Jerry.

They all sprang up, frolicked over the lawn with the abandon of
young puppies, climbed a fence, and tore down the mossy slope,
guided by the savory lure that ever grew stronger. A few minutes
later they arrived breathlessly in the sanctum sanctorum of
Rainbow Valley where the Blythe children were just about to give
thanks and eat.

They halted shyly. Una wished they had not been so precipitate:
but Di Blythe was equal to that and any occasion. She stepped
forward, with a comrade's smile.

"I guess I know who you are," she said. "You belong to the
manse, don't you?"

Faith nodded, her face creased by dimples.

"We smelled your trout cooking and wondered what it was."

"You must sit down and help us eat them," said Di.

"Maybe you haven't more than you want yourselves," said Jerry,
looking hungrily at the tin platter.

"We've heaps--three apiece," said Jem. "Sit down."

No more ceremony was necessary. Down they all sat on mossy
stones. Merry was that feast and long. Nan and Di would
probably have died of horror had they known what Faith and Una
knew perfectly well--that Carl had two young mice in his jacket
pocket. But they never knew it, so it never hurt them. Where can
folks get better acquainted than over a meal table? When the
last trout had vanished, the manse children and the Ingleside
children were sworn friends and allies. They had always known
each other and always would. The race of Joseph recognized its
own.

They poured out the history of their little pasts. The manse
children heard of Avonlea and Green Gables, of Rainbow Valley
traditions, and of the little house by the harbour shore where
Jem had been born. The Ingleside children heard of Maywater,
where the Merediths had lived before coming to the Glen, of Una's
beloved, one-eyed doll and Faith's pet rooster.

Faith was inclined to resent the fact that people laughed at her
for petting a rooster. She liked the Blythes because they
accepted it without question.

"A handsome rooster like Adam is just as nice a pet as a dog or
cat, _I_ think," she said. "If he was a canary nobody would
wonder. And I brought him up from a little, wee, yellow chicken.
Mrs. Johnson at Maywater gave him to me. A weasel had killed all
his brothers and sisters. I called him after her husband. I
never liked dolls or cats. Cats are too sneaky and dolls are
DEAD."

"Who lives in that house away up there?" asked Jerry.

"The Miss Wests--Rosemary and Ellen," answered Nan. "Di and I
are going to take music lessons from Miss Rosemary this summer."

Una gazed at the lucky twins with eyes whose longing was too
gentle for envy. Oh, if she could only have music lessons! It
was one of the dreams of her little hidden life. But nobody ever
thought of such a thing.

"Miss Rosemary is so sweet and she always dresses so pretty,"
said Di. "Her hair is just the colour of new molasses taffy,"
she added wistfully--for Di, like her mother before her, was not
resigned to her own ruddy tresses.

"I like Miss Ellen, too," said Nan. "She always used to give me
candies when she came to church. But Di is afraid of her."

"Her brows are so black and she has such a great deep voice,"
said Di. "Oh, how scared of her Kenneth Ford used to be when he
was little! Mother says the first Sunday Mrs. Ford brought him
to church Miss Ellen happened to be there, sitting right behind
them. And the minute Kenneth saw her he just screamed and
screamed until Mrs. Ford had to carry him out."

"Who is Mrs. Ford?" asked Una wonderingly.

"Oh, the Fords don't live here. They only come here in the
summer. And they're not coming this summer. They live in that
little house 'way, 'way down on the harbour shore where father
and mother used to lie. I wish you could see Persis Ford. She
is just like a picture."

"I've heard of Mrs. Ford," broke in Faith. "Bertie Shakespeare
Drew told me about her. She was married fourteen years to a dead
man and then he came to life."

"Nonsense," said Nan. "That isn't the way it goes at all.
Bertie Shakespeare can never get anything straight. I know the
whole story and I'll tell it to you some time, but not now, for
it's too long and it's time for us to go home. Mother doesn't
like us to be out late these damp evenings."

Nobody cared whether the manse children were out in the damp or
not. Aunt Martha was already in bed and the minister was still
too deeply lost in speculations concerning the immortality of the
soul to remember the mortality of the body. But they went home,
too, with visions of good times coming in their heads.

"I think Rainbow Valley is even nicer than the graveyard," said
Una. "And I just love those dear Blythes. It's SO nice when you
can love people because so often you CAN'T. Father said in his
sermon last Sunday that we should love everybody. But how can
we? How could we love Mrs. Alec Davis?"

"Oh, father only said that in the pulpit," said Faith airily.
"He has more sense than to really think it outside."

The Blythe children went up to Ingleside, except Jem, who slipped
away for a few moments on a solitary expedition to a remote
corner of Rainbow Valley. Mayflowers grew there and Jem never
forgot to take his mother a bouquet as long as they lasted.



CHAPTER V. THE ADVENT OF MARY VANCE

"This is just the sort of day you feel as if things might
happen," said Faith, responsive to the lure of crystal air and
blue hills. She hugged herself with delight and danced a
hornpipe on old Hezekiah Pollock's bench tombstone, much to the
horror of two ancient maidens who happened to be driving past
just as Faith hopped on one foot around the stone, waving the
other and her arms in the air.

"And that," groaned one ancient maiden, "is our minister's
daughter."

"What else could you expect of a widower's family?" groaned the
other ancient maiden. And then they both shook their heads.

It was early on Saturday morning and the Merediths were out in
the dew-drenched world with a delightful consciousness of the
holiday. They had never had anything to do on a holiday. Even
Nan and Di Blythe had certain household tasks for Saturday
mornings, but the daughters of the manse were free to roam from
blushing morn to dewy eve if so it pleased them. It DID please
Faith, but Una felt a secret, bitter humiliation because they
never learned to do anything. The other girls in her class at
school could cook and sew and knit; she only was a little
ignoramus.

Jerry suggested that they go exploring; so they went lingeringly
through the fir grove, picking up Carl on the way, who was on his
knees in the dripping grass studying his darling ants. Beyond
the grove they came out in Mr. Taylor's pasture field, sprinkled
over with the white ghosts of dandelions; in a remote corner was
an old tumbledown barn, where Mr. Taylor sometimes stored his
surplus hay crop but which was never used for any other purpose.
Thither the Meredith children trooped, and prowled about the
ground floor for several minutes.

"What was that?" whispered Una suddenly.

They all listened. There was a faint but distinct rustle in the
hayloft above. The Merediths looked at each other.

"There's something up there," breathed Faith.

"I'm going up to see what it is," said Jerry resolutely.

"Oh, don't," begged Una, catching his arm.

"I'm going."

"We'll all go, too, then," said Faith.

The whole four climbed the shaky ladder, Jerry and Faith quite
dauntless, Una pale from fright, and Carl rather absent-mindedly
speculating on the possibility of finding a bat up in the loft.
He longed to see a bat in daylight.

When they stepped off the ladder they saw what had made the
rustle and the sight struck them dumb for a few moments.

In a little nest in the hay a girl was curled up, looking as if
she had just wakened from sleep. When she saw them she stood up,
rather shakily, as it seemed, and in the bright sunlight that
streamed through the cobwebbed window behind her, they saw that
her thin, sunburned face was very pale under its tan. She had
two braids of lank, thick, tow-coloured hair and very odd
eyes--"white eyes," the manse children thought, as she stared at
them half defiantly, half piteously. They were really of so pale
a blue that they did seem almost white, especially when
contrasted with the narrow black ring that circled the iris. She
was barefooted and bareheaded, and was clad in a faded, ragged,
old plaid dress, much too short and tight for her. As for years,
she might have been almost any age, judging from her wizened
little face, but her height seemed to be somewhere in the
neighbourhood of twelve.

"Who are you?" asked Jerry.

The girl looked about her as if seeking a way of escape. Then
she seemed to give in with a little shiver of despair.

"I'm Mary Vance," she said.

"Where'd you come from?" pursued Jerry.

Mary, instead of replying, suddenly sat, or fell, down on the hay
and began to cry. Instantly Faith had flung herself down beside
her and put her arm around the thin, shaking shoulders.

"You stop bothering her," she commanded Jerry. Then she hugged
the waif. "Don't cry, dear. Just tell us what's the matter.
WE'RE friends."

"I'm so--so--hungry," wailed Mary. "I--I hain't had a thing to
eat since Thursday morning, 'cept a little water from the brook
out there."

The manse children gazed at each other in horror. Faith sprang
up.

"You come right up to the manse and get something to eat before
you say another word."

Mary shrank.

"Oh--I can't. What will your pa and ma say? Besides, they'd
send me back."

"We've no mother, and father won't bother about you. Neither
will Aunt Martha. Come, I say." Faith stamped her foot
impatiently. Was this queer girl going to insist on starving to
death almost at their very door?

Mary yielded. She was so weak that she could hardly climb down
the ladder, but somehow they got her down and over the field and
into the manse kitchen. Aunt Martha, muddling through her
Saturday cooking, took no notice of her. Faith and Una flew to
the pantry and ransacked it for such eatables as it
contained--some "ditto," bread, butter, milk and a doubtful pie.
Mary Vance attacked the food ravenously and uncritically, while
the manse children stood around and watched her. Jerry noticed
that she had a pretty mouth and very nice, even, white teeth.
Faith decided, with secret horror, that Mary had not one stitch
on her except that ragged, faded dress. Una was full of pure
pity, Carl of amused wonder, and all of them of curiosity.

"Now come out to the graveyard and tell us about yourself,"
ordered Faith, when Mary's appetite showed signs of failing her.
Mary was now nothing loath. Food had restored her natural
vivacity and unloosed her by no means reluctant tongue.

"You won't tell your pa or anybody if I tell you?" she
stipulated, when she was enthroned on Mr. Pollock's tombstone.
Opposite her the manse children lined up on another. Here was
spice and mystery and adventure. Something HAD happened.

"No, we won't."

"Cross your hearts?"

"Cross our hearts."

"Well, I've run away. I was living with Mrs. Wiley over-harbour.
Do you know Mrs. Wiley?"

"No."

"Well, you don't want to know her. She's an awful woman. My,
how I hate her! She worked me to death and wouldn't give me half
enough to eat, and she used to larrup me 'most every day. Look
a-here."

Mary rolled up her ragged sleeves, and held up her scrawny arms
and thin hands, chapped almost to rawness. They were black with
bruises. The manse children shivered. Faith flushed crimson
with indignation. Una's blue eyes filled with tears.

"She licked me Wednesday night with a stick," said Mary,
indifferently. "It was 'cause I let the cow kick over a pail of
milk. How'd I know the darn old cow was going to kick?"

A not unpleasant thrill ran over her listeners. They would never
dream of using such dubious words, but it was rather titivating
to hear someone else use them--and a girl, at that. Certainly
this Mary Vance was an interesting creature.

"I don't blame you for running away," said Faith.

"Oh, I didn't run away 'cause she licked me. A licking was all
in the day's work with me. I was darn well used to it. Nope,
I'd meant to run away for a week 'cause I'd found out that Mrs.
Wiley was going to rent her farm and go to Lowbridge to live and
give me to a cousin of hers up Charlottetown way. I wasn't going
to stand for THAT. She was a worse sort than Mrs. Wiley even.
Mrs. Wiley lent me to her for a month last summer and I'd rather
live with the devil himself."

Sensation number two. But Una looked doubtful.

"So I made up my mind I'd beat it. I had seventy cents saved up
that Mrs. John Crawford give me in the spring for planting
potatoes for her. Mrs. Wiley didn't know about it. She was
away visiting her cousin when I planted them. I thought I'd
sneak up here to the Glen and buy a ticket to Charlottetown and
try to get work there. I'm a hustler, let me tell you. There
ain't a lazy bone in MY body. So I lit out Thursday morning
'fore Mrs. Wiley was up and walked to the Glen--six miles. And
when I got to the station I found I'd lost my money. Dunno
how--dunno where. Anyhow, it was gone. I didn't know what to
do. If I went back to old Lady Wiley she'd take the hide off me.
So I went and hid in that old barn."

"And what will you do now?" asked Jerry.

"Dunno. I s'pose I'll have to go back and take my medicine. Now
that I've got some grub in my stomach I guess I can stand it."

But there was fear behind the bravado in Mary's eyes. Una
suddenly slipped from the one tombstone to the other and put her
arm about Mary.

"Don't go back. Just stay here with us."

"Oh, Mrs. Wiley'll hunt me up," said Mary. "It's likely she's on
my trail before this. I might stay here till she finds me, I
s'pose, if your folks don't mind. I was a darn fool ever to
think of skipping out. She'd run a weasel to earth. But I was
so misrebul."

Mary's voice quivered, but she was ashamed of showing her
weakness.

"I hain't had the life of a dog for these four years," she
explained defiantly.

"You've been four years with Mrs. Wiley?"

"Yip. She took me out of the asylum over in Hopetown when I was
eight."

"That's the same place Mrs. Blythe came from," exclaimed Faith.

"I was two years in the asylum. I was put there when I was six.
My ma had hung herself and my pa had cut his throat."

"Holy cats! Why?" said Jerry.

"Booze," said Mary laconically.

"And you've no relations?"

"Not a darn one that I know of. Must have had some once, though.
I was called after half a dozen of them. My full name is Mary
Martha Lucilla Moore Ball Vance. Can you beat that? My
grandfather was a rich man. I'll bet he was richer than YOUR
grandfather. But pa drunk it all up and ma, she did her part.
THEY used to beat me, too. Laws, I've been licked so much I kind
of like it."

Mary tossed her head. She divined that the manse children were
pitying her for her many stripes and she did not want pity. She
wanted to be envied. She looked gaily about her. Her strange
eyes, now that the dullness of famine was removed from them, were
brilliant. She would show these youngsters what a personage she
was.

"I've been sick an awful lot," she said proudly. "There's not
many kids could have come through what I have. I've had scarlet
fever and measles and ersipelas and mumps and whooping cough and
pewmonia."

"Were you ever fatally sick?" asked Una.

"I don't know," said Mary doubtfully.

"Of course she wasn't," scoffed Jerry. "If you're fatally sick
you die."

"Oh, well, I never died exactly," said Mary, "but I come blamed
near it once. They thought I was dead and they were getting
ready to lay me out when I up and come to."

"What is it like to be half dead?" asked Jerry curiously.

"Like nothing. I didn't know it for days afterwards. It was
when I had the pewmonia. Mrs. Wiley wouldn't have the
doctor--said she wasn't going to no such expense for a home girl.
Old Aunt Christina MacAllister nursed me with poultices. She
brung me round. But sometimes I wish I'd just died the other
half and done with it. I'd been better off."

"If you went to heaven I s'pose you would," said Faith, rather
doubtfully.

"Well, what other place is there to go to?" demanded Mary in a
puzzled voice.

"There's hell, you know," said Una, dropping her voice and
hugging Mary to lessen the awfulness of the suggestion.

"Hell? What's that?"

"Why, it's where the devil lives," said Jerry. "You've heard of
him--you spoke about him."

"Oh, yes, but I didn't know he lived anywhere. I thought he just
roamed round. Mr. Wiley used to mention hell when he was alive.
He was always telling folks to go there. I thought it was some
place over in New Brunswick where he come from."

"Hell is an awful place," said Faith, with the dramatic enjoyment
that is born of telling dreadful things. "Bad people go there
when they die and burn in fire for ever and ever and ever."

"Who told you that?" demanded Mary incredulously.

"It's in the Bible. And Mr. Isaac Crothers at Maywater told us,
too, in Sunday School. He was an elder and a pillar in the
church and knew all about it. But you needn't worry. If you're
good you'll go to heaven and if you're bad I guess you'd rather
go to hell."

"I wouldn't," said Mary positively. "No matter how bad I was I
wouldn't want to be burned and burned. _I_ know what it's like.
I picked up a red hot poker once by accident. What must you do
to be good?"

"You must go to church and Sunday School and read your Bible and
pray every night and give to missions," said Una.

"It sounds like a large order," said Mary. "Anything else?"

"You must ask God to forgive the sins you've committed.

"But I've never com--committed any," said Mary. "What's a sin
any way?"

"Oh, Mary, you must have. Everybody does. Did you never tell a
lie?"

"Heaps of 'em," said Mary.

"That's a dreadful sin," said Una solemnly.

"Do you mean to tell me," demanded Mary, "that I'd be sent to
hell for telling a lie now and then? Why, I HAD to. Mr. Wiley
would have broken every bone in my body one time if I hadn't told
him a lie. Lies have saved me many a whack, I can tell you."

Una sighed. Here were too many difficulties for her to solve.
She shuddered as she thought of being cruelly whipped. Very
likely she would have lied too. She squeezed Mary's little
calloused hand.

"Is that the only dress you've got?" asked Faith, whose joyous
nature refused to dwell on disagreeable subjects.

"I just put on this dress because it was no good," cried Mary
flushing. "Mrs. Wiley'd bought my clothes and I wasn't going to
be beholden to her for anything. And I'm honest. If I was going
to run away I wasn't going to take what belong to HER that was
worth anything. When I grow up I'm going to have a blue sating
dress. Your own clothes don't look so stylish. I thought
ministers' children were always dressed up."

It was plain that Mary had a temper and was sensitive on some
points. But there was a queer, wild charm about her which
captivated them all. She was taken to Rainbow Valley that
afternoon and introduced to the Blythes as "a friend of ours from
over-harbour who is visiting us." The Blythes accepted her
unquestioningly, perhaps because she was fairly respectable now.
After dinner--through which Aunt Martha had mumbled and Mr.
Meredith had been in a state of semi-unconsciousness while
brooding his Sunday sermon--Faith had prevailed on Mary to put on
one of her dresses, as well as certain other articles of
clothing. With her hair neatly braided Mary passed muster
tolerably well. She was an acceptable playmate, for she knew
several new and exciting games, and her conversation lacked not
spice. In fact, some of her expressions made Nan and Di look at
her rather askance. They were not quite sure what their mother
would have thought of her, but they knew quite well what Susan
would. However, she was a visitor at the manse, so she must be
all right.

When bedtime came there was the problem of where Mary should
sleep.

"We can't put her in the spare room, you know," said Faith
perplexedly to Una.

"I haven't got anything in my head," cried Mary in an injured
tone.

"Oh, I didn't mean THAT," protested Faith. "The spare room is
all torn up. The mice have gnawed a big hole in the feather tick
and made a nest in it. We never found it out till Aunt Martha
put the Rev. Mr. Fisher from Charlottetown there to sleep last
week. HE soon found it out. Then father had to give him his bed
and sleep on the study lounge. Aunt Martha hasn't had time to
fix the spare room bed up yet, so she says; so NOBODY can sleep
there, no matter how clean their heads are. And our room is so
small, and the bed so small you can't sleep with us."

"I can go back to the hay in the old barn for the night if you'll
lend me a quilt," said Mary philosophically. "It was kind of
chilly last night, but 'cept for that I've had worse beds."

"Oh, no, no, you mustn't do that," said Una. "I've thought of a
plan, Faith. You know that little trestle bed in the garret
room, with the old mattress on it, that the last minister left
there? Let's take up the spare room bedclothes and make Mary a
bed there. You won't mind sleeping in the garret, will you,
Mary? It's just above our room."

"Any place'll do me. Laws, I never had a decent place to sleep
in my life. I slept in the loft over the kitchen at Mrs.
Wiley's. The roof leaked rain in the summer and the snow druv in
in winter. My bed was a straw tick on the floor. You won't find
me a mite huffy about where _I_ sleep."

The manse garret was a long, low, shadowy place, with one gable
end partitioned off. Here a bed was made up for Mary of the
dainty hemstitched sheets and embroidered spread which Cecilia
Meredith had once so proudly made for her spare-room, and which
still survived Aunt Martha's uncertain washings. The good nights
were said and silence fell over the manse. Una was just falling
asleep when she heard a sound in the room just above that made
her sit up suddenly.

"Listen, Faith--Mary's crying," she whispered. Faith replied
not, being already asleep. Una slipped out of bed, and made her
way in her little white gown down the hall and up the garret
stairs. The creaking floor gave ample notice of her coming, and
when she reached the corner room all was moonlit silence and the
trestle bed showed only a hump in the middle.

"Mary," whispered Una.

There was no response.

Una crept close to the bed and pulled at the spread. "Mary, I
know you are crying. I heard you. Are you lonesome?"

Mary suddenly appeared to view but said nothing.

"Let me in beside you. I'm cold," said Una shivering in the
chilly air, for the little garret window was open and the keen
breath of the north shore at night blew in.

Mary moved over and Una snuggled down beside her.

"NOW you won't be lonesome. We shouldn't have left you here
alone the first night."

"I wasn't lonesome," sniffed Mary.

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