Book: Rainbow Valley

L >> Lucy Maud Montgomery >> Rainbow Valley




Mary received the news with chastened satisfaction.

"It's better luck than I expected," she said.

"You'll have to mind your p's and q's with Mrs. Elliott," said
Nan.

"Well, I can do that," flashed Mary. "I know how to behave when
I want to just as well as you, Nan Blythe."

"You mustn't use bad words, you know, Mary," said Una anxiously.

"I s'pose she'd die of horror if I did," grinned Mary, her white
eyes shining with unholy glee over the idea. "But you needn't
worry, Una. Butter won't melt in my mouth after this. I'll be
all prunes and prisms."

"Nor tell lies," added Faith.

"Not even to get off from a whipping?" pleaded Mary.

"Mrs. Elliott will NEVER whip you--NEVER," exclaimed Di.

"Won't she?" said Mary skeptically. "If I ever find myself in a
place where I ain't licked I'll think it's heaven all right. No
fear of me telling lies then. I ain't fond of telling 'em--I'd
ruther not, if it comes to that."

The day before Mary's departure from the manse they had a picnic
in her honour in Rainbow Valley, and that evening all the manse
children gave her something from their scanty store of treasured
things for a keepsake. Carl gave her his Noah's ark and Jerry
his second best jew's-harp. Faith gave her a little hairbrush
with a mirror in the back of it, which Mary had always considered
very wonderful. Una hesitated between an old beaded purse and a
gay picture of Daniel in the lion's den, and finally offered Mary
her choice. Mary really hankered after the beaded purse, but she
knew Una loved it, so she said,

"Give me Daniel. I'd rusher have it 'cause I'm partial to lions.
Only I wish they'd et Daniel up. It would have been more
exciting."

At bedtime Mary coaxed Una to sleep with her.

"It's for the last time," she said, "and it's raining tonight,
and I hate sleeping up there alone when it's raining on account
of that graveyard. I don't mind it on fine nights, but a night
like this I can't see anything but the rain pouring down on them
old white stones, and the wind round the window sounds as if them
dead people were trying to get in and crying 'cause they
couldn't."

"I like rainy nights," said Una, when they were cuddled down
together in the little attic room, "and so do the Blythe girls."

"I don't mind 'em when I'm not handy to graveyards," said Mary.
"If I was alone here I'd cry my eyes out I'd be so lonesome. I
feel awful bad to be leaving you all."

"Mrs. Elliott will let you come up and play in Rainbow Valley
quite often I'm sure," said Una. "And you WILL be a good girl,
won't you, Mary?"

"Oh, I'll try," sighed Mary. "But it won't be as easy for me to
be good--inside, I mean, as well as outside--as it is for you.
You hadn't such scalawags of relations as I had."

"But your people must have had some good qualities as well as bad
ones," argued Una. "You must live up to them and never mind
their bad ones."

"I don't believe they had any good qualities," said Mary
gloomily. "I never heard of any. My grandfather had money, but
they say he was a rascal. No, I'll just have to start out on my
own hook and do the best I can."

"And God will help you, you know, Mary, if you ask Him."

"I don't know about that."

"Oh, Mary. You know we asked God to get a home for you and He
did."

"I don't see what He had to do with it," retorted Mary. "It was
you put it into Mrs. Elliott's head."

"But God put it into her HEART to take you. All my putting it
into her HEAD wouldn't have done any good if He hadn't."

"Well, there may be something in that," admitted Mary. "Mind
you, I haven't got anything against God, Una. I'm willing to
give Him a chance. But, honest, I think He's an awful lot like
your father--just absent-minded and never taking any notice of a
body most of the time, but sometimes waking up all of a suddent
and being awful good and kind and sensible."

"Oh, Mary, no!" exclaimed horrified Una. "God isn't a bit like
father--I mean He's a thousand times better and kinder."

"If He's as good as your father He'll do for me," said Mary.
"When your father was talking to me I felt as if I never could be
bad any more."

"I wish you'd talk to father about Him," sighed Una. "He can
explain it all so much better than I can."

"Why, so I will, next time he wakes up," promised Mary. "That
night he talked to me in the study he showed me real clear that
my praying didn't kill Mrs. Wiley. My mind's been easy since,
but I'm real cautious about praying. I guess the old rhyme is
the safest. Say, Una, it seems to me if one has to pray to
anybody it'd be better to pray to the devil than to God. God's
good, anyhow so you say, so He won't do you any harm, but from
all I can make out the devil needs to be pacified. I think the
sensible way would be to say to HIM, 'Good devil, please don't
tempt me. Just leave me alone, please.' Now, don't you?"

"Oh, no, no, Mary. I'm sure it couldn't be right to pray to the
devil. And it wouldn't do any good because he's bad. It might
aggravate him and he'd be worse than ever."

"Well, as to this God-matter," said Mary stubbornly, "since you
and I can't settle it, there ain't no use in talking more about
it until we've a chanct to find out the rights of it. I'll do
the best I can alone till then."

"If mother was alive she could tell us everything," said Una with
a sigh.

"I wisht she was alive," said Mary. "I don't know what's going
to become of you youngsters when I'm gone. Anyhow, DO try and
keep the house a little tidy. The way people talks about it is
scandalous. And the first thing you know your father will be
getting married again and then your noses will be out of joint."

Una was startled. The idea of her father marrying again had
never presented itself to her before. She did not like it and
she lay silent under the chill of it.

"Stepmothers are AWFUL creatures," Mary went on. "I could make
your blood run cold if I was to tell you all I know about 'em.
The Wilson kids across the road from Wiley's had a stepmother.
She was just as bad to 'em as Mrs. Wiley was to me. It'll be
awful if you get a stepmother."

"I'm sure we won't," said Una tremulously. "Father won't marry
anybody else."

"He'll be hounded into it, I expect," said Mary darkly. "All the
old maids in the settlement are after him. There's no being up
to them. And the worst of stepmothers is, they always set your
father against you. He'd never care anything about you again.
He'd always take her part and her children's part. You see,
she'd make him believe you were all bad."

"I wish you hadn't told me this, Mary," cried Una. "It makes me
feel so unhappy."

"I only wanted to warn you," said Mary, rather repentantly. "Of
course, your father's so absent-minded he mightn't happen to
think of getting married again. But it's better to be prepared."

Long after Mary slept serenely little Una lay awake, her eyes
smarting with tears. On, how dreadful it would be if her father
should marry somebody who would make him hate her and Jerry and
Faith and Carl! She couldn't bear it--she couldn't!

Mary had not instilled any poison of the kind Miss Cornelia had
feared into the manse children's minds. Yet she had certainly
contrived to do a little mischief with the best of intentions.
But she slept dreamlessly, while Una lay awake and the rain fell
and the wind wailed around the old gray manse. And the Rev. John
Meredith forgot to go to bed at all because he was absorbed in
reading a life of St. Augustine. It was gray dawn when he
finished it and went upstairs, wrestling with the problems of two
thousand years ago. The door of the girls' room was open and he
saw Faith lying asleep, rosy and beautiful. He wondered where
Una was. Perhaps she had gone over to "stay all night" with the
Blythe girls. She did this occasionally, deeming it a great
treat. John Meredith sighed. He felt that Una's whereabouts
ought not to be a mystery to him. Cecelia would have looked
after her better than that.

If only Cecelia were still with him! How pretty and gay she had
been! How the old manse up at Maywater had echoed to her songs!
And she had gone away so suddenly, taking her laughter and music
and leaving silence--so suddenly that he had never quite got over
his feeling of amazement. How could SHE, the beautiful and
vivid, have died?

The idea of a second marriage had never presented itself
seriously to John Meredith. He had loved his wife so deeply that
he believed he could never care for any woman again. He had a
vague idea that before very long Faith would be old enough to
take her mother's place. Until then, he must do the best he
could alone. He sighed and went to his room, where the bed was
still unmade. Aunt Martha had forgotten it, and Mary had not
dared to make it because Aunt Martha had forbidden her to meddle
with anything in the minister's room. But Mr. Meredith did not
notice that it was unmade. His last thoughts were of St.
Augustine.



CHAPTER X. THE MANSE GIRLS CLEAN HOUSE

"Ugh," said Faith, sitting up in bed with a shiver. "It's
raining. I do hate a rainy Sunday. Sunday is dull enough even
when it's fine."

"We oughtn't to find Sunday dull," said Una sleepily, trying to
pull her drowsy wits together with an uneasy conviction that they
had overslept.

"But we DO, you know," said Faith candidly. "Mary Vance says
most Sundays are so dull she could hang herself."

"We ought to like Sunday better than Mary Vance," said Una
remorsefully. "We're the minister's children."

"I wish we were a blacksmith's children," protested Faith
angrily, hunting for her stockings. "THEN people wouldn't expect
us to be better than other children. JUST look at the holes in
my heels. Mary darned them all up before she went away, but
they're as bad as ever now. Una, get up. I can't get the
breakfast alone. Oh, dear. I wish father and Jerry were home.
You wouldn't think we'd miss father much--we don't see much of
him when he is home. And yet EVERYTHING seems gone. I must run
in and see how Aunt Martha is."

"Is she any better?" asked Una, when Faith returned.

"No, she isn't. She's groaning with the misery still. Maybe we
ought to tell Dr. Blythe. But she says not--she never had a
doctor in her life and she isn't going to begin now. She says
doctors just live by poisoning people. Do you suppose they do?"

"No, of course not," said Una indignantly. "I'm sure Dr. Blythe
wouldn't poison anybody."

"Well, we'll have to rub Aunt Martha's back again after
breakfast. We'd better not make the flannels as hot as we did
yesterday."

Faith giggled over the remembrance. They had nearly scalded the
skin off poor Aunt Martha's back. Una sighed. Mary Vance would
have known just what the precise temperature of flannels for a
misery back should be. Mary knew everything. They knew nothing.
And how could they learn, save by bitter experience for which, in
this instance, unfortunate Aunt Martha had paid?

The preceding Monday Mr. Meredith had left for Nova Scotia to
spend his short vacation, taking Jerry with him. On Wednesday
Aunt Martha was suddenly seized with a recurring and mysterious
ailment which she always called "the misery," and which was
tolerably certain to attack her at the most inconvenient times.
She could not rise from her bed, any movement causing agony. A
doctor she flatly refused to have. Faith and Una cooked the
meals and waited on her. The less said about the meals the
better--yet they were not much worse than Aunt Martha's had been.
There were many women in the village who would have been glad to
come and help, but Aunt Martha refused to let her plight be
known.

"You must worry on till I kin git around," she groaned. "Thank
goodness, John isn't here. There's a plenty o' cold biled meat
and bread and you kin try your hand at making porridge."

The girls had tried their hand, but so far without much success.
The first day it had been too thin. The next day so thick that
you could cut it in slices. And both days it had been burned.

"I hate porridge," said Faith viciously. "When I have a house of
my own I'm NEVER going to have a single bit of porridge in it."

"What'll your children do then?" asked Una. "Children have to
have porridge or they won't grow. Everybody says so."

"They'll have to get along without it or stay runts," retorted
Faith stubbornly. "Here, Una, you stir it while I set the table.
If I leave it for a minute the horrid stuff will burn. It's half
past nine. We'll be late for Sunday School."

"I haven't seen anyone going past yet," said Una. "There won't
likely be many out. Just see how it's pouring. And when there's
no preaching the folks won't come from a distance to bring the
children."

"Go and call Carl," said Faith.

Carl, it appeared, had a sore throat, induced by getting wet in
the Rainbow Valley marsh the previous evening while pursuing
dragon-flies. He had come home with dripping stockings and boots
and had sat out the evening in them. He could not eat any
breakfast and Faith made him go back to bed again. She and Una
left the table as it was and went to Sunday School. There was no
one in the school room when they got there and no one came. They
waited until eleven and then went home.

"There doesn't seem to be anybody at the Methodist Sunday School
either," said Una.

"I'm GLAD," said Faith. "I'd hate to think the Methodists were
better at going to Sunday School on rainy Sundays than the
Presbyterians. But there's no preaching in their Church to-day,
either, so likely their Sunday School is in the afternoon."

Una washed the dishes, doing them quite nicely, for so much had
she learned from Mary Vance. Faith swept the floor after a
fashion and peeled the potatoes for dinner, cutting her finger in
the process.

"I wish we had something for dinner besides ditto," sighed Una.
"I'm so tired of it. The Blythe children don't know what ditto
is. And we NEVER have any pudding. Nan says Susan would faint
if they had no pudding on Sundays. Why aren't we like other
people, Faith?"

"I don't want to be like other people," laughed Faith, tying up
her bleeding finger. "I like being myself. It's more
interesting. Jessie Drew is as good a housekeeper as her mother,
but would you want to be as stupid as she is?"

"But our house isn't right. Mary Vance says so. She says people
talk about it being so untidy."

Faith had an inspiration.

"We'll clean it all up," she cried. "We'll go right to work
to-morrow. It's a real good chance when Aunt Martha is laid up
and can't interfere with us. We'll have it all lovely and clean
when father comes home, just like it was when Mary went away.
ANY ONE can sweep and dust and wash windows. People won't be
able to talk about us any more. Jem Blythe says it's only old
cats that talk, but their talk hurts just as much as anybody's."

"I hope it will be fine to-morrow," said Una, fired with
enthusiasm. "Oh, Faith, it will be splendid to be all cleaned up
and like other people."

"I hope Aunt Martha's misery will last over to-morrow," said
Faith. "If it doesn't we won't get a single thing done."

Faith's amiable wish was fulfilled. The next day found Aunt
Martha still unable to rise. Carl, too, was still sick and
easily prevailed on to stay in bed. Neither Faith nor Una had
any idea how sick the boy really was; a watchful mother would
have had a doctor without delay; but there was no mother, and
poor little Carl, with his sore throat and aching head and
crimson cheeks, rolled himself up in his twisted bedclothes and
suffered alone, somewhat comforted by the companionship of a
small green lizard in the pocket of his ragged nighty.

The world was full of summer sunshine after the rain. It was a
peerless day for house-cleaning and Faith and Una went gaily to
work.

"We'll clean the dining-room and the parlour," said Faith. "It
wouldn't do to meddle with the study, and it doesn't matter much
about the upstairs. The first thing is to take everything out."

Accordingly, everything was taken out. The furniture was piled
on the veranda and lawn and the Methodist graveyard fence was
gaily draped with rugs. An orgy of sweeping followed, with an
attempt at dusting on Una's part, while Faith washed the windows
of the dining-room, breaking one pane and cracking two in the
process. Una surveyed the streaked result dubiously.

"They don't look right, somehow," she said. "Mrs. Elliott's and
Susan's windows just shine and sparkle."

"Never mind. They let the sunshine through just as well," said
Faith cheerfully. "They MUST be clean after all the soap and
water I've used, and that's the main thing. Now, it's past
eleven, so I'll wipe up this mess on the floor and we'll go
outside. You dust the furniture and I'll shake the rugs. I'm
going to do it in the graveyard. I don't want to send dust
flying all over the lawn.

Faith enjoyed the rug shaking. To stand on Hezekiah Pollock's
tombstone, flapping and shaking rugs, was real fun. To be sure,
Elder Abraham Clow and his wife, driving past in their capacious
double-seated buggy, seemed to gaze at her in grim disapproval.

"Isn't that a terrible sight?" said Elder Abraham solemnly.

"I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own
eyes," said Mrs. Elder Abraham, more solemnly still.

Faith waved a door mat cheerily at the Clow party. It did not
worry her that the elder and his wife did not return her
greeting. Everybody knew that Elder Abraham had never been known
to smile since he had been appointed Superintendent of the Sunday
School fourteen years previously. But it hurt her that Minnie
and Adella Clow did not wave back. Faith liked Minnie and
Adella. Next to the Blythes, they were her best friends in
school and she always helped Adella with her sums. This was
gratitude for you. Her friends cut her because she was shaking
rugs in an old graveyard where, as Mary Vance said, not a living
soul had been buried for years. Faith flounced around to the
veranda, where she found Una grieved in spirit because the Clow
girls had not waved to her, either.

"I suppose they're mad over something," said Faith. "Perhaps
they're jealous because we play so much in Rainbow Valley with
the Blythes. Well, just wait till school opens and Adella wants
me to show her how to do her sums! We'll get square then. Come
on, let's put the things back in. I'm tired to death and I don't
believe the rooms will look much better than before we started--
though I shook out pecks of dust in the graveyard. I HATE
house-cleaning."

It was two o'clock before the tired girls finished the two rooms.
They got a dreary bite in the kitchen and intended to wash the
dishes at once. But Faith happened to pick up a new story-book
Di Blythe had lent her and was lost to the world until sunset.
Una took a cup of rank tea up to Carl but found him asleep; so
she curled herself up on Jerry's bed and went to sleep too.
Meanwhile, a weird story flew through Glen St. Mary and folks
asked each other seriously what was to be done with those manse
youngsters.

"That is past laughing at, believe ME," said Miss Cornelia to her
husband, with a heavy sigh. "I couldn't believe it at first.
Miranda Drew brought the story home from the Methodist Sunday
School this afternoon and I simply scoffed at it. But Mrs. Elder
Abraham says she and the Elder saw it with their own eyes."

"Saw what?" asked Marshall.

"Faith and Una Meredith stayed home from Sunday School this
morning and CLEANED HOUSE," said Miss Cornelia, in accents of
despair. "When Elder Abraham went home from the church--he had
stayed behind to straighten out the library books--he saw them
shaking rugs in the Methodist graveyard. I can never look a
Methodist in the face again. Just think what a scandal it will
make!"

A scandal it assuredly did make, growing more scandalous as it
spread, until the over-harbour people heard that the manse
children had not only cleaned house and put out a washing on
Sunday, but had wound up with an afternoon picnic in the
graveyard while the Methodist Sunday School was going on. The
only household which remained in blissful ignorance of the
terrible thing was the manse itself; on what Faith and Una fondly
believed to be Tuesday it rained again; for the next three days
it rained; nobody came near the manse; the manse folk went
nowhere; they might have waded through the misty Rainbow Valley
up to Ingleside, but all the Blythe family, save Susan and the
doctor, were away on a visit to Avonlea.

"This is the last of our bread," said Faith, "and the ditto is
done. If Aunt Martha doesn't get better soon WHAT will we do?"

"We can buy some bread in the village and there's the codfish
Mary dried," said Una. "But we don't know how to cook it."

"Oh, that's easy," laughed Faith. "You just boil it."

Boil it they did; but as it did not occur to them to soak it
beforehand it was too salty to eat. That night they were very
hungry; but by the following day their troubles were over.
Sunshine returned to the world; Carl was well and Aunt Martha's
misery left her as suddenly as it had come; the butcher called at
the manse and chased famine away. To crown all, the Blythes
returned home, and that evening they and the manse children and
Mary Vance kept sunset tryst once more in Rainbow Valley, where
the daisies were floating upon the grass like spirits of the dew
and the bells on the Tree Lovers rang like fairy chimes in the
scented twilight.



CHAPTER XI. A DREADFUL DISCOVERY

"Well, you kids have gone and done it now," was Mary's greeting,
as she joined them in the Valley. Miss Cornelia was up at
Ingleside, holding agonized conclave with Anne and Susan, and
Mary hoped that the session might be a long one, for it was all
of two weeks since she had been allowed to revel with her chums
in the dear valley of rainbows.

"Done what?" demanded everybody but Walter, who was day-dreaming
as usual.

"It's you manse young ones, I mean," said Mary. "It was just
awful of you. _I_ wouldn't have done such a thing for the world,
and _I_ weren't brought up in a manse--weren't brought up
ANYWHERE--just COME up."

"What have WE done?" asked Faith blankly.

"Done! You'd BETTER ask! The talk is something terrible. I
expect it's ruined your father in this congregation. He'll never
be able to live it down, poor man! Everybody blames him for it,
and that isn't fair. But nothing IS fair in this world. You
ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

"What HAVE we done?" asked Una again, despairingly. Faith said
nothing, but her eyes flashed golden-brown scorn at Mary.

"Oh, don't pretend innocence," said Mary, witheringly.
"Everybody knows what you have done."

"_I_ don't," interjected Jem Blythe indignantly. "Don't let me
catch you making Una cry, Mary Vance. What are you talking
about?"

"I s'pose you don't know, since you're just back from up west,"
said Mary, somewhat subdued. Jem could always manage her. "But
everybody else knows, you'd better believe."

"Knows what?"

"That Faith and Una stayed home from Sunday School last Sunday
and CLEANED HOUSE."

"We didn't," cried Faith and Una, in passionate denial.

Mary looked haughtily at them.

"I didn't suppose you'd deny it, after the way you've combed ME
down for lying," she said. "What's the good of saying you
didn't? Everybody knows you DID. Elder Clow and his wife saw
you. Some people say it will break up the church, but _I_ don't
go that far. You ARE nice ones."

Nan Blythe stood up and put her arms around the dazed Faith and
Una.

"They were nice enough to take you in and feed you and clothe you
when you were starving in Mr. Taylor's barn, Mary Vance," she
said. "You are VERY grateful, I must say."

"I AM grateful," retorted Mary. "You'd know it if you'd heard me
standing up for Mr. Meredith through thick and thin. I've
blistered my tongue talking for him this week. I've said again
and again that he isn't to blame if his young ones did clean
house on Sunday. He was away--and they knew better."

"But we didn't," protested Una. "It was MONDAY we cleaned house.
Wasn't it, Faith?"

"Of course it was," said Faith, with flashing eyes. "We went to
Sunday School in spite of the rain--and no one came--not even
Elder Abraham, for all his talk about fair-weather Christians."

"It was Saturday it rained," said Mary. "Sunday was as fine as
silk. I wasn't at Sunday School because I had toothache, but
every one else was and they saw all your stuff out on the lawn.
And Elder Abraham and Mrs. Elder Abraham saw you shaking rugs in
the graveyard."

Una sat down among the daisies and began to cry.

"Look here," said Jem resolutely, "this thing must be cleared up.
SOMEBODY has made a mistake. Sunday WAS fine, Faith. How could
you have thought Saturday was Sunday?"

"Prayer-meeting was Thursday night," cried Faith, "and Adam flew
into the soup-pot on Friday when Aunt Martha's cat chased him,
and spoiled our dinner; and Saturday there was a snake in the
cellar and Carl caught it with a forked stick and carried it out,
and Sunday it rained. So there!"

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