Book: Rainbow Valley

L >> Lucy Maud Montgomery >> Rainbow Valley




"Prayer-meeting was Wednesday night," said Mary. "Elder Baxter
was to lead and he couldn't go Thursday night and it was changed
to Wednesday. You were just a day out, Faith Meredith, and you
DID work on Sunday."

Suddenly Faith burst into a peal of laughter.

"I suppose we did. What a joke!"

"It isn't much of a joke for your father," said Mary sourly.

"It'll be all right when people find out it was just a mistake,"
said Faith carelessly. "We'll explain."

"You can explain till you're black in the face," said Mary, "but
a lie like that'll travel faster'n further than you ever will.
I'VE seen more of the world than you and _I_ know. Besides,
there are plenty of folks won't believe it was a mistake."

"They will if I tell them," said Faith.

"You can't tell everybody," said Mary. "No, I tell you you've
disgraced your father."

Una's evening was spoiled by this dire reflection, but Faith
refused to be made uncomfortable. Besides, she had a plan that
would put everything right. So she put the past with its mistake
behind her and gave herself over to enjoyment of the present.
Jem went away to fish and Walter came out of his reverie and
proceeded to describe the woods of heaven. Mary pricked up her
ears and listened respectfully. Despite her awe of Walter she
revelled in his "book talk." It always gave her a delightful
sensation. Walter had been reading his Coleridge that day, and
he pictured a heaven where

"There were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense bearing tree,
And there were forests ancient as the hills
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery."

"I didn't know there was any woods in heaven," said Mary, with a
long breath. "I thought it was all streets--and streets--AND
streets."

"Of course there are woods," said Nan. "Mother can't live
without trees and I can't, so what would be the use of going to
heaven if there weren't any trees?"

"There are cities, too," said the young dreamer, "splendid
cities--coloured just like the sunset, with sapphire towers and
rainbow domes. They are built of gold and diamonds--whole
streets of diamonds, flashing like the sun. In the squares there
are crystal fountains kissed by the light, and everywhere the
asphodel blooms--the flower of heaven."

"Fancy!" said Mary. "I saw the main street in Charlottetown once
and I thought it was real grand, but I s'pose it's nothing to
heaven. Well, it all sounds gorgeous the way you tell it, but
won't it be kind of dull, too?"

"Oh, I guess we can have some fun when the angels' backs are
turned," said Faith comfortably.

"Heaven is ALL fun," declared Di.

"The Bible doesn't say so," cried Mary, who had read so much of
the Bible on Sunday afternoons under Miss Cornelia's eye that she
now considered herself quite an authority on it.

"Mother says the Bible language is figurative," said Nan.

"Does that mean that it isn't true?" asked Mary hopefully.

"No--not exactly--but I think it means that heaven will be just
like what you'd like it to be."

"I'd like it to be just like Rainbow Valley," said Mary, "with
all you kids to gas and play with. THAT'S good enough for me.
Anyhow, we can't go to heaven till we're dead and maybe not then,
so what's the use of worrying? Here's Jem with a string of trout
and it's my turn to fry them."

"We ought to know more about heaven than Walter does when we're
the minister's family," said Una, as they walked home that night.

"We KNOW just as much, but Walter can IMAGINE," said Faith.
"Mrs. Elliott says he gets it from his mother."

"I do wish we hadn't made that mistake about Sunday," sighed Una.

"Don't worry over that. I've thought of a great plan to explain
so that everybody will know," said Faith. "Just wait till
to-morrow night."



CHAPTER XII. AN EXPLANATION AND A DARE

The Rev. Dr. Cooper preached in Glen St. Mary the next evening
and the Presbyterian Church was crowded with people from near and
far. The Reverend Doctor was reputed to be a very eloquent
speaker; and, bearing in mind the old dictum that a minister
should take his best clothes to the city and his best sermons to
the country, he delivered a very scholarly and impressive
discourse. But when the folks went home that night it was not of
Dr. Cooper's sermon they talked. They had completely forgotten
all about it.

Dr. Cooper had concluded with a fervent appeal, had wiped the
perspiration from his massive brow, had said "Let us pray" as he
was famed for saying it, and had duly prayed. There was a slight
pause. In Glen St. Mary church the old fashion of taking the
collection after the sermon instead of before still held--mainly
because the Methodists had adopted the new fashion first, and
Miss Cornelia and Elder Clow would not hear of following where
Methodists had led. Charles Baxter and Thomas Douglas, whose
duty it was to pass the plates, were on the point of rising to
their feet. The organist had got out the music of her anthem and
the choir had cleared its throat. Suddenly Faith Meredith rose
in the manse pew, walked up to the pulpit platform, and faced the
amazed audience.

Miss Cornelia half rose in her seat and then sat down again. Her
pew was far back and it occurred to her that whatever Faith meant
to do or say would be half done or said before she could reach
her. There was no use making the exhibition worse than it had to
be. With an anguished glance at Mrs. Dr. Blythe, and another at
Deacon Warren of the Methodist Church, Miss Cornelia resigned
herself to another scandal.

"If the child was only dressed decently itself," she groaned in
spirit.

Faith, having spilled ink on her good dress, had serenely put on
an old one of faded pink print. A caticornered rent in the skirt
had been darned with scarlet tracing cotton and the hem had been
let down, showing a bright strip of unfaded pink around the
skirt. But Faith was not thinking of her clothes at all. She
was feeling suddenly nervous. What had seemed easy in
imagination was rather hard in reality. Confronted by all those
staring questioning eyes Faith's courage almost failed her. The
lights were so bright, the silence so awesome. She thought she
could not speak after all. But she MUST--her father MUST be
cleared of suspicion. Only--the words would NOT come.

Una's little pearl-pure face gleamed up at her beseechingly from
the manse pew. The Blythe children were lost in amazement. Back
under the gallery Faith saw the sweet graciousness of Miss
Rosemary West's smile and the amusement of Miss Ellen's. But
none of these helped her. It was Bertie Shakespeare Drew who
saved the situation. Bertie Shakespeare sat in the front seat of
the gallery and he made a derisive face at Faith. Faith promptly
made a dreadful one back at him, and, in her anger over being
grimaced at by Bertie Shakespeare, forgot her stage fright. She
found her voice and spoke out clearly and bravely.

"I want to explain something," she said, "and I want to do it now
because everybody will hear it that heard the other. People are
saying that Una and I stayed home last Sunday and cleaned house
instead of going to Sunday School. Well, we did--but we didn't
mean to. We got mixed up in the days of the week. It was all
Elder Baxter's fault"--sensation in Baxter's pew--"because he
went and changed the prayer-meeting to Wednesday night and then
we thought Thursday was Friday and so on till we thought Saturday
was Sunday. Carl was laid up sick and so was Aunt Martha, so
they couldn't put us right. We went to Sunday School in all that
rain on Saturday and nobody came. And then we thought we'd clean
house on Monday and stop old cats from talking about how dirty
the manse was"--general sensation all over the church--"and we
did. I shook the rugs in the Methodist graveyard because it was
such a convenient place and not because I meant to be
disrespectful of the dead. It isn't the dead folks who have made
the fuss over this--it's the living folks. And it isn't right
for any of you to blame my father for this, because he was away
and didn't know, and anyhow we thought it was Monday. He's just
the best father that ever lived in the world and we love him with
all our hearts."

Faith's bravado ebbed out in a sob. She ran down the steps and
flashed out of the side door of the church. There the friendly
starlit, summer night comforted her and the ache went out of her
eyes and throat. She felt very happy. The dreadful explanation
was over and everybody knew now that her father wasn't to blame
and that she and Una were not so wicked as to have cleaned house
knowingly on Sunday.

Inside the church people gazed blankly at each other, but Thomas
Douglas rose and walked up the aisle with a set face. HIS duty
was clear; the collection must be taken if the skies fell. Taken
it was; the choir sang the anthem, with a dismal conviction that
it fell terribly flat, and Dr. Cooper gave out the concluding
hymn and pronounced the benediction with considerably less
unction than usual. The Reverend Doctor had a sense of humour
and Faith's performance tickled him. Besides, John Meredith was
well known in Presbyterian circles.

Mr. Meredith returned home the next afternoon, but before his
coming Faith contrived to scandalize Glen St. Mary again. In the
reaction from Sunday evening's intensity and strain she was
especially full of what Miss Cornelia would have called
"devilment" on Monday. This led her to dare Walter Blythe to
ride through Main Street on a pig, while she rode another one.

The pigs in question were two tall, lank animals, supposed to
belong to Bertie Shakespeare Drew's father, which had been
haunting the roadside by the manse for a couple of weeks. Walter
did not want to ride a pig through Glen St. Mary, but whatever
Faith Meredith dared him to do must be done. They tore down the
hill and through the village, Faith bent double with laughter
over her terrified courser, Walter crimson with shame. They tore
past the minister himself, just coming home from the station; he,
being a little less dreamy and abstracted than usual--owing to
having had a talk on the train with Miss Cornelia who always
wakened him up temporarily--noticed them, and thought he really
must speak to Faith about it and tell her that such conduct was
not seemly. But he had forgotten the trifling incident by the
time he reached home. They passed Mrs. Alec Davis, who shrieked
in horror, and they passed Miss Rosemary West who laughed and
sighed. Finally, just before the pigs swooped into Bertie
Shakespeare Drew's back yard, never to emerge therefrom again, so
great had been the shock to their nerves--Faith and Walter jumped
off, as Dr. and Mrs. Blythe drove swiftly by.

"So that is how you bring up your boys," said Gilbert with mock
severity.

"Perhaps I do spoil them a little," said Anne contritely, "but,
oh, Gilbert, when I think of my own childhood before I came to
Green Gables I haven't the heart to be very strict. How hungry
for love and fun I was--an unloved little drudge with never a
chance to play! They do have such good times with the manse
children."

"What about the poor pigs?" asked Gilbert.

Anne tried to look sober and failed.

"Do you really think it hurt them?" she said. "I don't think
anything could hurt those animals. They've been the plague of
the neighbourhood this summer and the Drews WON'T shut them up.
But I'll talk to Walter--if I can keep from laughing when I do
it."

Miss Cornelia came up to Ingleside that evening to relieve her
feelings over Sunday night. To her surprise she found that Anne
did not view Faith's performance in quite the same light as she
did.

"I thought there was something brave and pathetic in her getting
up there before that churchful of people, to confess," she said.
"You could see she was frightened to death--yet she was bound to
clear her father. I loved her for it."

"Oh, of course, the poor child meant well," sighed Miss Cornelia,
"but just the same it was a terrible thing to do, and is making
more talk than the house-cleaning on Sunday. THAT had begun to
die away, and this has started it all up again. Rosemary West is
like you--she said last night as she left the church that it was
a plucky thing for Faith to do, but it made her feel sorry for
the child, too. Miss Ellen thought it all a good joke, and said
she hadn't had as much fun in church for years. Of course THEY
don't care--they are Episcopalians. But we Presbyterians feel
it. And there were so many hotel people there that night and
scores of Methodists. Mrs. Leander Crawford cried, she felt so
bad. And Mrs. Alec Davis said the little hussy ought to be
spanked."

"Mrs. Leander Crawford is always crying in church," said Susan
contemptuously. "She cries over every affecting thing the
minister says. But you do not often see her name on a
subscription list, Mrs. Dr. dear. Tears come cheaper. She tried
to talk to me one day about Aunt Martha being such a dirty
housekeeper; and I wanted to say, 'Every one knows that YOU have
been seen mixing up cakes in the kitchen wash-pan, Mrs. Leander
Crawford!' But I did not say it, Mrs. Dr. dear, because I have
too much respect for myself to condescend to argue with the likes
of her. But I could tell worse things than THAT of Mrs. Leander
Crawford, if I was disposed to gossip. And as for Mrs. Alec
Davis, if she had said that to me, Mrs. Dr. dear, do you know
what I would have said? I would have said, 'I have no doubt you
would like to spank Faith, Mrs. Davis, but you will never have
the chance to spank a minister's daughter either in this world or
in that which is to come.'"

"If poor Faith had only been decently dressed," lamented Miss
Cornelia again, "it wouldn't have been quite that bad. But that
dress looked dreadful, as she stood there upon the platform."

"It was clean, though, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan. "They ARE
clean children. They may be very heedless and reckless, Mrs. Dr.
dear, and I am not saying they are not, but they NEVER forget to
wash behind their ears."

"The idea of Faith forgetting what day was Sunday," persisted
Miss Cornelia. "She will grow up just as careless and
impractical as her father, believe ME. I suppose Carl would have
known better if he hadn't been sick. I don't know what was wrong
with him, but I think it very likely he had been eating those
blueberries that grew in the graveyard. No wonder they made him
sick. If I was a Methodist I'd try to keep my graveyard cleaned
up at least."

"I am of the opinion that Carl only ate the sours that grow on
the dyke," said Susan hopefully. "I do not think ANY minister's
son would eat blueberries that grew on the graves of dead people.
You know it would not be so bad, Mrs. Dr. dear, to eat things
that grew on the dyke."

"The worst of last night's performance was the face Faith made
made at somebody in the congregation before she started in," said
Miss Cornelia. "Elder Clow declares she made it at him. And DID
you hear that she was seen riding on a pig to-day?"

"I saw her. Walter was with her. I gave him a little--a VERY
little--scolding about it. He did not say much, but he gave me
the impression that it had been his idea and that Faith was not
to blame."

"I do not not believe THAT, Mrs. Dr. dear," cried Susan, up in
arms. "That is just Walter's way--to take the blame on himself.
But you know as well as I do, Mrs. Dr. dear, that that blessed
child would never have thought of riding on a pig, even if he
does write poetry."

"Oh, there's no doubt the notion was hatched in Faith Meredith's
brain," said Miss Cornelia. "And I don't say that I'm sorry that
Amos Drew's old pigs did get their come-uppance for once. But
the minister's daughter!"

"AND the doctor's son!" said Anne, mimicking Miss Cornelia's
tone. Then she laughed. "Dear Miss Cornelia, they're only
little children. And you KNOW they've never yet done anything
bad--they're just heedless and impulsive--as I was myself once.
They'll grow sedate and sober--as I've done."

Miss Cornelia laughed, too.

"There are times, Anne dearie, when I know by your eyes that YOUR
soberness is put on like a garment and you're really aching to do
something wild and young again. Well, I feel encouraged.
Somehow, a talk with you always does have that effect on me.
Now, when I go to see Barbara Samson, it's just the opposite.
She makes me feel that everything's wrong and always will be.
But of course living all your life with a man like Joe Samson
wouldn't be exactly cheering."

"It is a very strange thing to think that she married Joe Samson
after all her chances," remarked Susan. "She was much sought
after when she was a girl. She used to boast to me that she had
twenty-one beaus and Mr. Pethick."

"What was Mr. Pethick?"

"Well, he was a sort of hanger-on, Mrs. Dr. dear, but you could
not exactly call him a beau. He did not really have any
intentions. Twenty-one beaus--and me that never had one! But
Barbara went through the woods and picked up the crooked stick
after all. And yet they say her husband can make better baking
powder biscuits than she can, and she always gets him to make
them when company comes to tea."

"Which reminds ME that I have company coming to tea to-morrow and
I must go home and set my bread," said Miss Cornelia. "Mary said
she could set it and no doubt she could. But while I live and
move and have my being _I_ set my own bread, believe me."

"How is Mary getting on?" asked Anne.

"I've no fault to find with Mary," said Miss Cornelia rather
gloomily. "She's getting some flesh on her bones and she's clean
and respectful--though there's more in her than _I_ can fathom.
She's a sly puss. If you dug for a thousand years you couldn't
get to the bottom of that child's mind, believe ME! As for work,
I never saw anything like her. She EATS it up. Mrs. Wiley may
have been cruel to her, but folks needn't say she made Mary work.
Mary's a born worker. Sometimes I wonder which will wear out
first--her legs or her tongue. I don't have enough to do to keep
me out of mischief these days. I'll be real glad when school
opens, for then I'll have something to do again. Mary doesn't
want to go to school, but I put my foot down and said that go she
must. I shall NOT have the Methodists saying that I kept her out
of school while I lolled in idleness."



CHAPTER XIII. THE HOUSE ON THE HILL

There was a little unfailing spring, always icy cold and crystal
pure, in a certain birch-screened hollow of Rainbow Valley in the
lower corner near the marsh. Not a great many people knew of its
existence. The manse and Ingleside children knew, of course, as
they knew everything else about the magic valley. Occasionally
they went there to get a drink, and it figured in many of their
plays as a fountain of old romance. Anne knew of it and loved it
because it somehow reminded her of the beloved Dryad's Bubble at
Green Gables. Rosemary West knew of it; it was her fountain of
romance, too. Eighteen years ago she had sat behind it one
spring twilight and heard young Martin Crawford stammer out a
confession of fervent, boyish love. She had whispered her own
secret in return, and they had kissed and promised by the wild
wood spring. They had never stood together by it again--Martin
had sailed on his fatal voyage soon after; but to Rosemary West
it was always a sacred spot, hallowed by that immortal hour of
youth and love. Whenever she passed near it she turned aside to
hold a secret tryst with an old dream--a dream from which the
pain had long gone, leaving only its unforgettable sweetness.

The spring was a hidden thing. You might have passed within ten
feet of it and never have suspected its existence. Two
generations past a huge old pine had fallen almost across it.
Nothing was left of the tree but its crumbling trunk out of which
the ferns grew thickly, making a green roof and a lacy screen for
the water. A maple-tree grew beside it with a curiously gnarled
and twisted trunk, creeping along the ground for a little way
before shooting up into the air, and so forming a quaint seat;
and September had flung a scarf of pale smoke-blue asters around
the hollow.

John Meredith, taking the cross-lots road through Rainbow Valley
on his way home from some pastoral visitations around the Harbour
head one evening, turned aside to drink of the little spring.
Walter Blythe had shown it to him one afternoon only a few days
before, and they had had a long talk together on the maple seat.
John Meredith, under all his shyness and aloofness, had the heart
of a boy. He had been called Jack in his youth, though nobody in
Glen St. Mary would ever have believed it. Walter and he had
taken to each other and had talked unreservedly. Mr. Meredith
found his way into some sealed and sacred chambers of the lad's
soul wherein not even Di had ever looked. They were to be chums
from that friendly hour and Walter knew that he would never be
frightened of the minister again.

"I never believed before that it was possible to get really
acquainted with a minister," he told his mother that night.

John Meredith drank from his slender white hand, whose grip of
steel always surprised people who were unacquainted with it, and
then sat down on the maple seat. He was in no hurry to go home;
this was a beautiful spot and he was mentally weary after a round
of rather uninspiring conversations with many good and stupid
people. The moon was rising. Rainbow Valley was wind-haunted
and star-sentinelled only where he was, but afar from the upper
end came the gay notes of children's laughter and voices.

The ethereal beauty of the asters in the moonlight, the glimmer
of the little spring, the soft croon of the brook, the wavering
grace of the brackens all wove a white magic round John Meredith.
He forgot congregational worries and spiritual problems; the
years slipped away from him; he was a young divinity student
again and the roses of June were blooming red and fragrant on the
dark, queenly head of his Cecilia. He sat there and dreamed like
any boy. And it was at this propitious moment that Rosemary West
stepped aside from the by-path and stood beside him in that
dangerous, spell-weaving place. John Meredith stood up as she
came in and saw her--REALLY saw her--for the first time.

He had met her in his church once or twice and shaken hands with
her abstractedly as he did with anyone he happened to encounter
on his way down the aisle. He had never met her elsewhere, for
the Wests were Episcopalians, with church affinities in
Lowbridge, and no occasion for calling upon them had ever arisen.
Before to-night, if anyone had asked John Meredith what Rosemary
West looked like he would not have had the slightest notion. But
he was never to forget her, as she appeared to him in the glamour
of kind moonlight by the spring.

She was certainly not in the least like Cecilia, who had always
been his ideal of womanly beauty. Cecilia had been small and
dark and vivacious--Rosemary West was tall and fair and placid,
yet John Meredith thought he had never seen so beautiful a woman.

She was bareheaded and her golden hair--hair of a warm gold,
"molasses taffy" colour as Di Blythe had said--was pinned in
sleek, close coils over her head; she had large, tranquil, blue
eyes that always seemed full of friendliness, a high white
forehead and a finely shaped face.

Rosemary West was always called a "sweet woman." She was so
sweet that even her high-bred, stately air had never gained for
her the reputation of being "stuck-up," which it would inevitably
have done in the case of anyone else in Glen St. Mary. Life had
taught her to be brave, to be patient, to love, to forgive. She
had watched the ship on which her lover went sailing out of Four
Winds Harbour into the sunset. But, though she watched long, she
had never seen it coming sailing back. That vigil had taken
girlhood from her eyes, yet she kept her youth to a marvellous
degree. Perhaps this was because she always seemed to preserve
that attitude of delighted surprise towards life which most of us
leave behind in childhood--an attitude which not only made
Rosemary herself seem young, but flung a pleasing illusion of
youth over the consciousness of every one who talked to her.

John Meredith was startled by her loveliness and Rosemary was
startled by his presence. She had never thought she would find
anyone by that remote spring, least of all the recluse of Glen
St. Mary manse. She almost dropped the heavy armful of books she
was carrying home from the Glen lending library, and then, to
cover her confusion, she told one of those small fibs which even
the best of women do tell at times.

"I--I came for a drink," she said, stammering a little, in answer
to Mr. Meredith's grave "good evening, Miss West." She felt that
she was an unpardonable goose and she longed to shake herself.
But John Meredith was not a vain man and he knew she would likely
have been as much startled had she met old Elder Clow in that
unexpected fashion. Her confusion put him at ease and he forgot
to be shy; besides, even the shyest of men can sometimes be quite
audacious in moonlight.

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