The Complete Works of L M Montgomery

by L. M. Montgomery

  “When you begin to make poor jokes it is time to stop arguing with you,” said David, with a shrug of his fat shoulders. “Go your own gait and dree your own weird. I’d as soon expect success in trying to storm the citadel single-handed as in trying to turn you from any course about which you had once made up your mind. Whew, this street takes it out of a fellow! What could have possessed our ancestors to run a town up the side of a hill? I’m not so slim and active as I was on MY graduation day ten years ago. By the way, what a lot of co-eds were in your class — twenty, if I counted right. When I graduated there were only two ladies in our class and they were the pioneers of their sex at Queenslea. They were well past their first youth, very grim and angular and serious; and they could never have been on speaking terms with a mirror in their best days. But mark you, they were excellent females — oh, very excellent. Times have changed with a vengeance, judging from the line-up of co-eds to-day. There was one girl there who can’t be a day over eighteen — and she looked as if she were made out of gold and roseleaves and dewdrops.”

  “The oracle speaks in poetry,” laughed Eric. “That was Florence Percival, who led the class in mathematics, as I’m a living man. By many she is considered the beauty of her class. I can’t say that such is my opinion. I don’t greatly care for that blonde, babyish style of loveliness — I prefer Agnes Campion. Did you notice her — the tall, dark girl with the ropes of hair and a sort of crimson, velvety bloom on her face, who took honours in philosophy?”

  “I DID notice her,” said David emphatically, darting a keen side glance at his friend. “I noticed her most particularly and critically — for someone whispered her name behind me and coupled it with the exceedingly interesting information that Miss Campion was supposed to be the future Mrs. Eric Marshall. Whereupon I stared at her with all my eyes.”

  “There is no truth in that report,” said Eric in a tone of annoyance. “Agnes and I are the best of friends and nothing more. I like and admire her more than any woman I know; but if the future Mrs. Eric Marshall exists in the flesh I haven’t met her yet. I haven’t even started out to look for her — and don’t intend to for some years to come. I have something else to think of,” he concluded, in a tone of contempt, for which anyone might have known he would be punished sometime if Cupid were not deaf as well as blind.

  “You’ll meet the lady of the future some day,” said David dryly. “And in spite of your scorn I venture to predict that if fate doesn’t bring her before long you’ll very soon start out to look for her. A word of advice, oh, son of your mother. When you go courting take your common sense with you.”

  “Do you think I shall be likely to leave it behind?” asked Eric amusedly.

  “Well, I mistrust you,” said David, sagely wagging his head. “The Lowland Scotch part of you is all right, but there’s a Celtic streak in you, from that little Highland grandmother of yours, and when a man has that there’s never any knowing where it will break out, or what dance it will lead him, especially when it comes to this love-making business. You are just as likely as not to lose your head over some little fool or shrew for the sake of her outward favour and make yourself miserable for life. When you pick you a wife please remember that I shall reserve the right to pass a candid opinion on her.”

  “Pass all the opinions you like, but it is MY opinion, and mine only, which will matter in the long run,” retorted Eric.

  “Confound you, yes, you stubborn offshoot of a stubborn breed,” growled David, looking at him affectionately. “I know that, and that is why I’ll never feel at ease about you until I see you married to the right sort of a girl. She’s not hard to find. Nine out of ten girls in this country of ours are fit for kings’ palaces. But the tenth always has to be reckoned with.”

  “You are as bad as Clever Alice in the fairy tale who worried over the future of her unborn children,” protested Eric.

  “Clever Alice has been very unjustly laughed at,” said David gravely. “We doctors know that. Perhaps she overdid the worrying business a little, but she was perfectly right in principle. If people worried a little more about their unborn children — at least, to the extent of providing a proper heritage, physically, mentally, and morally, for them — and then stopped worrying about them after they ARE born, this world would be a very much pleasanter place to live in, and the human race would make more progress in a generation than it has done in recorded history.”

  “Oh, if you are going to mount your dearly beloved hobby of heredity I am not going to argue with you, David, man. But as for the matter of urging me to hasten and marry me a wife, why don’t you” — It was on Eric’s lips to say, “Why don’t you get married to a girl of the right sort yourself and set me a good example?” But he checked himself. He knew that there was an old sorrow in David Baker’s life which was not to be unduly jarred by the jests even of privileged friendship. He changed his question to, “Why don’t you leave this on the knees of the gods where it properly belongs? I thought you were a firm believer in predestination, David.”

  “Well, so I am, to a certain extent,” said David cautiously. “I believe, as an excellent old aunt of mine used to say, that what is to be will be and what isn’t to be happens sometimes. And it is precisely such unchancy happenings that make the scheme of things go wrong. I dare say you think me an old fogy, Eric; but I know something more of the world than you do, and I believe, with Tennyson’s Arthur, that ‘there’s no more subtle master under heaven than is the maiden passion for a maid.’ I want to see you safely anchored to the love of some good woman as soon as may be, that’s all. I’m rather sorry Miss Campion isn’t your lady of the future. I liked her looks, that I did. She is good and strong and true — and has the eyes of a woman who could love in a way that would be worth while. Moreover, she’s well-born, well-bred, and well-educated — three very indispensable things when it comes to choosing a woman to fill your mother’s place, friend of mine!”

  “I agree with you,” said Eric carelessly. “I could not marry any woman who did not fulfill those conditions. But, as I have said, I am not in love with Agnes Campion — and it wouldn’t be of any use if I were. She is as good as engaged to Larry West. You remember West?”

  “That thin, leggy fellow you chummed with so much your first two years in Queenslea? Yes, what has become of him?”

  “He had to drop out after his second year for financial reasons. He is working his own way through college, you know. For the past two years he has been teaching school in some out-of-the-way place over in Prince Edward Island. He isn’t any too well, poor fellow — never was very strong and has studied remorselessly. I haven’t heard from him since February. He said then that he was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to stick it out till the end of the school year. I hope Larry won’t break down. He is a fine fellow and worthy even of Agnes Campion. Well, here we are. Coming in, David?”

  “Not this afternoon — haven’t got time. I must mosey up to the North End to see a man who has got a lovely throat. Nobody can find out what is the matter. He has puzzled all the doctors. He has puzzled me, but I’ll find out what is wrong with him if he’ll only live long enough.”

  CHAPTER II.

  A LETTER OF DESTINY

  Eric, finding that his father had not yet returned from the college, went into the library and sat down to read a letter he had picked up from the hall table. It was from Larry West, and after the first few lines Eric’s face lost the absent look it had worn and assumed an expression of interest.

  “I am writing to ask a favour of you, Marshall,” wrote West. “The fact is, I’ve fallen into the hands of the Philistines — that is to say, the doctors. I’ve not been feeling very fit all winter but I’ve held on, hoping to finish out the year.

  “Last week my landlady — who is a saint in spectacles and calico — looked at me one morning at the breakfast table and said, VERY gently, ‘You must go to town to-morrow, Master, and see a doctor about yourself.’

  “I went and did n
ot stand upon the order of my going. Mrs. Williamson is She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. She has an inconvenient habit of making you realize that she is exactly right, and that you would be all kinds of a fool if you didn’t take her advice. You feel that what she thinks to-day you will think to-morrow.

  “In Charlottetown I consulted a doctor. He punched and pounded me, and poked things at me and listened at the other end of them; and finally he said I must stop work ‘immejutly and to onct’ and hie me straightway to a climate not afflicted with the north-east winds of Prince Edward Island in the spring. I am not to be allowed to do any work until the fall. Such was his dictum and Mrs. Williamson enforces it.

  “I shall teach this week out and then the spring vacation of three weeks begins. I want you to come over and take my place as pedagogue in the Lindsay school for the last week in May and the month of June. The school year ends then and there will be plenty of teachers looking for the place, but just now I cannot get a suitable substitute. I have a couple of pupils who are preparing to try the Queen’s Academy entrance examinations, and I don’t like to leave them in the lurch or hand them over to the tender mercies of some third-class teacher who knows little Latin and less Greek. Come over and take the school till the end of the term, you petted son of luxury. It will do you a world of good to learn how rich a man feels when he is earning twenty-five dollars a month by his own unaided efforts!

  “Seriously, Marshall, I hope you can come, for I don’t know any other fellow I can ask. The work isn’t hard, though you’ll likely find it monotonous. Of course, this little north-shore farming settlement isn’t a very lively place. The rising and setting of the sun are the most exciting events of the average day. But the people are very kind and hospitable; and Prince Edward Island in the month of June is such a thing as you don’t often see except in happy dreams. There are some trout in the pond and you’ll always find an old salt at the harbour ready and willing to take you out cod-fishing or lobstering.

  “I’ll bequeath you my boarding house. You’ll find it comfortable and not further from the school than a good constitutional. Mrs. Williamson is the dearest soul alive; and she is one of those old-fashioned cooks who feed you on feasts of fat things and whose price is above rubies.

  “Her husband, Robert, or Bob, as he is commonly called despite his sixty years, is quite a character in his way. He is an amusing old gossip, with a turn for racy comment and a finger in everybody’s pie. He knows everything about everybody in Lindsay for three generations back.

  “They have no living children, but Old Bob has a black cat which is his especial pride and darling. The name of this animal is Timothy and as such he must always be called and referred to. Never, as you value Robert’s good opinion, let him hear you speaking of his pet as ‘the cat,’ or even as ‘Tim.’ You will never be forgiven and he will not consider you a fit person to have charge of the school.

  “You shall have my room, a little place over the kitchen, with a ceiling that follows the slant of the roof down one side, against which you will bump your head times innumerable until you learn to remember that it is there, and a looking glass which will make one of your eyes as small as a pea and the other as big as an orange.

  “But to compensate for these disadvantages the supply of towels is generous and unexceptionable; and there is a window whence you will daily behold an occidental view over Lindsay Harbour and the gulf beyond which is an unspeakable miracle of beauty. The sun is setting over it as I write and I see such a sea of glass mingled with fire as might have figured in the visions of the Patmian seer. A vessel is sailing away into the gold and crimson and pearl of the horizon; the big revolving light on the tip of the headland beyond the harbour has just been lighted and is winking and flashing like a beacon,

  ”’O’er the foam

  Of perilous seas in faerie lands forlorn.’”

  “Wire me if you can come; and if you can, report for duty on the twenty-third of May.”

  Mr. Marshall, Senior, came in, just as Eric was thoughtfully folding up his letter. The former looked more like a benevolent old clergyman or philanthropist than the keen, shrewd, somewhat hard, although just and honest, man of business that he really was. He had a round, rosy face, fringed with white whiskers, a fine head of long white hair, and a pursed-up mouth. Only in his blue eyes was a twinkle that would have made any man who designed getting the better of him in a bargain think twice before he made the attempt.

  It was easily seen that Eric must have inherited his personal beauty and distinction of form from his mother, whose picture hung on the dark wall between the windows. She had died while still young, when Eric was a boy of ten. During her lifetime she had been the object of the passionate devotion of both her husband and son; and the fine, strong, sweet face of the picture was a testimony that she had been worthy of their love and reverence. The same face, cast in a masculine mold, was repeated in Eric; the chestnut hair grew off his forehead in the same way; his eyes were like hers, and in his grave moods they held a similar expression, half brooding, half tender, in their depths.

  Mr. Marshall was very proud of his son’s success in college, but he had no intention of letting him see it. He loved this boy of his, with the dead mother’s eyes, better than anything on earth, and all his hopes and ambitions were bound up in him.

  “Well, that fuss is over, thank goodness,” he said testily, as he dropped into his favourite chair.

  “Didn’t you find the programme interesting?” asked Eric absently.

  “Most of it was tommyrot,” said his father. “The only things I liked were Charlie’s Latin prayer and those pretty little girls trotting up to get their diplomas. Latin IS the language for praying in, I do believe, — at least, when a man has a voice like Old Charlie’s. There was such a sonorous roll to the words that the mere sound of them made me feel like getting down on my marrow bones. And then those girls were as pretty as pinks, now weren’t they? Agnes was the finest-looking of the lot in my opinion. I hope it’s true that you’re courting her, Eric?”

  “Confound it, father,” said Eric, half irritably, half laughingly, “have you and David Baker entered into a conspiracy to hound me into matrimony whether I will or no?”

  “I’ve never said a word to David Baker on such a subject,” protested Mr. Marshall.

  “Well, you are just as bad as he is. He hectored me all the way home from the college on the subject. But why are you in such a hurry to have me married, dad?”

  “Because I want a homemaker in this house as soon as may be.

  There has never been one since your mother died. I am tired of

  housekeepers. And I want to see your children at my knees before

  I die, Eric, and I’m an old man now.”

  “Well, your wish is natural, father,” said Eric gently, with a glance at his mother’s picture. “But I can’t rush out and marry somebody off-hand, can I? And I fear it wouldn’t exactly do to advertise for a wife, even in these days of commercial enterprise.”

  “Isn’t there ANYBODY you’re fond of?” queried Mr. Marshall, with the patient air of a man who overlooks the frivolous jests of youth.

  “No. I never yet saw the woman who could make my heart beat any faster.”

  “I don’t know what you young men are made of nowadays,” growled his father. “I was in love half a dozen times before I was your age.”

  “You might have been ‘in love.’ But you never LOVED any woman until you met my mother. I know that, father. And it didn’t happen till you were pretty well on in life either.”

  “You’re too hard to please. That’s what’s the matter, that’s what’s the matter!”

  “Perhaps I am. When a man has had a mother like mine his standard of womanly sweetness is apt to be pitched pretty high. Let’s drop the subject, father. Here, I want you to read this letter — it’s from Larry.”

  “Humph!” grunted Mr. Marshall, when he had finished with it. “So Larry’s knocked out at last — always thought he would be �
�� always expected it. Sorry, too. He was a decent fellow. Well, are you going?”

  “Yes, I think so, if you don’t object.”

  “You’ll have a pretty monotonous time of it, judging from his account of Lindsay.”

  “Probably. But I am not going over in search of excitement. I’m going to oblige Larry and have a look at the Island.”

  “Well, it’s worth looking at, some parts of the year,” conceded Mr. Marshall. “When I’m on Prince Edward Island in the summer I always understand an old Scotch Islander I met once in Winnipeg. He was always talking of ‘the Island.’ Somebody once asked him, ‘What island do you mean?’ He simply LOOKED at that ignorant man. Then he said, ‘Why, Prince Edward Island, mon. WHAT OTHER ISLAND IS THERE?’ Go if you’d like to. You need a rest after the grind of examinations before settling down to business. And mind you don’t get into any mischief, young sir.”

  “Not much likelihood of that in a place like Lindsay, I fancy,” laughed Eric.