An expression of amazement came into the good woman’s face. She looked scrutinizingly at the firm mouth and steady gray eyes for a moment. Then she said in a troubled voice,
“Do you think that is wise, Master? I suppose Kilmeny is pretty; the egg peddler told me she was; and no doubt she is a good, nice girl. But she wouldn’t be a suitable wife for you — a girl that can’t speak.”
“That doesn’t make any difference to me.”
“But what will your people say?”
“I have no ‘people’ except my father. When he sees Kilmeny he will understand. She is all the world to me, Mrs. Williamson.”
“As long as you believe that there is nothing more to be said,” was the quiet answer, “I’d be a little bit afraid if I was you, though. But young people never think of those things.”
“My only fear is that she won’t care for me,” said Eric soberly.
Mrs. Williamson surveyed the handsome, broad-shouldered young man shrewdly.
“I don’t think there are many women would say you ‘no’, Master. I wish you well in your wooing, though I can’t help thinking you’re doing a daft-like thing. I hope you won’t have any trouble with Thomas and Janet. They are so different from other folks there is no knowing. But take my advice, Master, and go and see them about it right off. Don’t go on meeting Kilmeny unbeknownst to them.”
“I shall certainly take your advice,” said Eric, gravely. “I should have gone to them before. It was merely thoughtlessness on my part. Possibly they do know already. Kilmeny may have told them.”
Mrs. Williamson shook her head decidedly.
“No, no, Master, she hasn’t. They’d never have let her go on meeting you there if they had known. I know them too well to think of that for a moment. Go you straight to them and say to them just what you have said to me. That is your best plan, Master. And take care of Neil. People say he has a notion of Kilmeny himself. He’ll do you a bad turn if he can, I’ve no doubt. Them foreigners can’t be trusted — and he’s just as much a foreigner as his parents before him — though he HAS been brought up on oatmeal and the shorter catechism, as the old saying has it. I feel that somehow — I always feel it when I look at him singing in the choir.”
“Oh, I am not afraid of Neil,” said Eric carelessly. “He couldn’t help loving Kilmeny — nobody could.”
“I suppose every young man thinks that about his girl — if he’s the right sort of young man,” said Mrs. Williamson with a little sigh.
She watched Eric out of sight anxiously.
“I hope it’ll all come out right,” she thought. “I hope he ain’t making an awful mistake — but — I’m afraid. Kilmeny must be very pretty to have bewitched him so. Well, I suppose there is no use in my worrying over it. But I do wish he had never gone back to that old orchard and seen her.”
CHAPTER XI.
A LOVER AND HIS LASS
Kilmeny was in the orchard when Eric reached it, and he lingered for a moment in the shadow of the spruce wood to dream over her beauty.
The orchard had lately overflowed in waves of old-fashioned caraway, and she was standing in the midst of its sea of bloom, with the lace-like blossoms swaying around her in the wind. She wore the simple dress of pale blue print in which he had first seen her; silk attire could not better have become her loveliness. She had woven herself a chaplet of half open white rosebuds and placed it on her dark hair, where the delicate blossoms seemed less wonderful than her face.
When Eric stepped through the gap she ran to meet him with outstretched hands, smiling. He took her hands and looked into her eyes with an expression before which hers for the first time faltered. She looked down, and a warm blush strained the ivory curves of her cheek and throat. His heart bounded, for in that blush he recognized the banner of love’s vanguard.
“Are you glad to see me, Kilmeny?” he asked, in a low significant tone.
She nodded, and wrote in a somewhat embarrassed fashion,
“Yes. Why do you ask? You know I am always glad to see you. I was afraid you would not come. You did not come last night and I was so sorry. Nothing in the orchard seemed nice any longer. I couldn’t even play. I tried to, and my violin only cried. I waited until it was dark and then I went home.”
“I am sorry you were disappointed, Kilmeny. I couldn’t come last night. Some day I shall tell you why. I stayed home to learn a new lesson. I am sorry you missed me — no, I am glad. Can you understand how a person may be glad and sorry for the same thing?”
She nodded again, with a return of her usual sweet composure.
“Yes, I could not have understood once, but I can now. Did you learn your new lesson?”
“Yes, very thoroughly. It was a delightful lesson when I once understood it. I must try to teach it to you some day. Come over to the old bench, Kilmeny. There is something I want to say to you. But first, will you give me a rose?”
She ran to the bush, and, after careful deliberation, selected a perfect half-open bud and brought it to him — a white bud with a faint, sunrise flush about its golden heart.
“Thank you. It is as beautiful as — as a woman I know,” Eric said.
A wistful look came into her face at his words, and she walked with a drooping head across the orchard to the bench.
“Kilmeny,” he said, seriously, “I am going to ask you to do something for me. I want you to take me home with you and introduce me to your uncle and aunt.”
She lifted her head and stared at him incredulously, as if he had asked her to do something wildly impossible. Understanding from his grave face that he meant what he said, a look of dismay dawned in her eyes. She shook her head almost violently and seemed to be making a passionate, instinctive effort to speak. Then she caught up her pencil and wrote with feverish haste:
“I cannot do that. Do not ask me to. You do not understand. They would be very angry. They do not want to see any one coming to the house. And they would never let me come here again. Oh, you do not mean it?”
He pitied her for the pain and bewilderment in her eyes; but he took her slender hands in his and said firmly,
“Yes, Kilmeny, I do mean it. It is not quite right for us to be meeting each other here as we have been doing, without the knowledge and consent of your friends. You cannot now understand this, but — believe me — it is so.”
She looked questioningly, pityingly into his eyes. What she read there seemed to convince her, for she turned very pale and an expression of hopelessness came into her face. Releasing her hands, she wrote slowly,
“If you say it is wrong I must believe it. I did not know anything so pleasant could be wrong. But if it is wrong we must not meet here any more. Mother told me I must never do anything that was wrong. But I did not know this was wrong.”
“It was not wrong for you, Kilmeny. But it was a little wrong for me, because I knew better — or rather, should have known better. I didn’t stop to think, as the children say. Some day you will understand fully. Now, you will take me to your uncle and aunt, and after I have said to them what I want to say it will be all right for us to meet here or anywhere.”
She shook her head.
“No,” she wrote, “Uncle Thomas and Aunt Janet will tell you to go away and never come back. And they will never let me come here any more. Since it is not right to meet you I will not come, but it is no use to think of going to them. I did not tell them about you because I knew that they would forbid me to see you, but I am sorry, since it is so wrong.”
“You must take me to them,” said Eric firmly. “I am quite sure that things will not be as you fear when they hear what I have to say.”
Uncomforted, she wrote forlornly,
“I must do it, since you insist, but I am sure it will be no use. I cannot take you to-night because they are away. They went to the store at Radnor. But I will take you to-morrow night; and after that I shall not see you any more.”
Two great tears brimmed over in her big blue eyes and splashed down on her slate. Her lips qui
vered like a hurt child’s. Eric put his arm impulsively about her and drew her head down upon his shoulder. As she cried there, softly, miserably, he pressed his lips to the silky black hair with its coronal of rosebuds. He did not see two burning eyes which were looking at him over the old fence behind him with hatred and mad passion blazing in their depths. Neil Gordon was crouched there, with clenched hands and heaving breast, watching them.
“Kilmeny, dear, don’t cry,” said Eric tenderly. “You shall see me again. I promise you that, whatever happens. I do not think your uncle and aunt will be as unreasonable as you fear, but even if they are they shall not prevent me from meeting you somehow.”
Kilmeny lifted her head, and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“You do not know what they are like,” she wrote. “They will lock me into my room. That is the way they always punished me when I was a little girl. And once, not so very long ago, when I was a big girl, they did it.”
“If they do I’ll get you out somehow,” said Eric, laughing a little.
She allowed herself to smile, but it was a rather forlorn little effort. She did not cry any more, but her spirits did not come back to her. Eric talked gaily, but she only listened in a pensive, absent way, as if she scarcely heard him. When he asked her to play she shook her head.
“I cannot think any music to-night,” she wrote, “I must go home, for my head aches and I feel very stupid.”
“Very well, Kilmeny. Now, don’t worry, little girl. It will all come out all right.”
Evidently she did not share his confidence, for her head drooped again as they walked together across the orchard. At the entrance of the wild cherry lane she paused and looked at him half reproachfully, her eyes filling again. She seemed to be bidding him a mute farewell. With an impulse of tenderness which he could not control, Eric put his arm about her and kissed her red, trembling mouth. She started back with a little cry. A burning colour swept over her face, and the next moment she fled swiftly up the darkening lane.
The sweetness of that involuntary kiss clung to Eric’s lips as he went homeward, half-intoxicating him. He knew that it had opened the gates of womanhood to Kilmeny. Never again, he felt, would her eyes meet his with their old unclouded frankness. When next he looked into them he knew that he should see there the consciousness of his kiss. Behind her in the orchard that night Kilmeny had left her childhood.
CHAPTER XII.
A PRISONER OF LOVE
When Eric betook himself to the orchard the next evening he had to admit that he felt rather nervous. He did not know how the Gordons would receive him and certainly the reports he had heard of them were not encouraging, to say the least of it. Even Mrs. Williamson, when he had told her where he was going, seemed to look upon him as one bent on bearding a lion in his den.
“I do hope they won’t be very uncivil to you, Master,” was the best she could say.
He expected Kilmeny to be in the orchard before him, for he had been delayed by a call from one of the trustees; but she was nowhere to be seen. He walked across it to the wild cherry lane; but at its entrance he stopped short in sudden dismay.
Neil Gordon had stepped from behind the trees and stood confronting him, with blazing eyes, and lips which writhed in emotion so great that at first it prevented him from speaking.
With a thrill of dismay Eric instantly understood what must have taken place. Neil had discovered that he and Kilmeny had been meeting in the orchard, and beyond doubt had carried that tale to Janet and Thomas Gordon. He realized how unfortunate it was that this should have happened before he had had time to make his own explanation. It would probably prejudice Kilmeny’s guardians still further against him. At this point in his thoughts Neil’s pent up passion suddenly found vent in a burst of wild words.
“So you’ve come to meet her again. But she isn’t here — you’ll never see her again! I hate you — I hate you — I hate you!”
His voice rose to a shrill scream. He took a furious step nearer Eric as if he would attack him. Eric looked steadily in his eyes with a calm defiance, before which his wild passion broke like foam on a rock.
“So you have been making trouble for Kilmeny, Neil, have you?” said Eric contemptuously. “I suppose you have been playing the spy. And I suppose that you have told her uncle and aunt that she has been meeting me here. Well, you have saved me the trouble of doing it, that is all. I was going to tell them myself, tonight. I don’t know what your motive in doing this has been. Was it jealousy of me? Or have you done it out of malice to Kilmeny?”
His contempt cowed Neil more effectually than any display of anger could have done.
“Never you mind why I did it,” he muttered sullenly. “What I did or why I did it is no business of yours. And you have no business to come sneaking around here either. Kilmeny won’t meet you here again.”
“She will meet me in her own home then,” said Eric sternly.
“Neil, in behaving as you have done you have shown yourself to be
a very foolish, undisciplined boy. I am going straightway to
Kilmeny’s uncle and aunt to explain everything.”
Neil sprang forward in his path.
“No — no — go away,” he implored wildly. “Oh, sir — oh, Mr. Marshall, please go away. I’ll do anything for you if you will. I love Kilmeny. I’ve loved her all my life. I’d give my life for her. I can’t have you coming here to steal her from me. If you do — I’ll kill you! I wanted to kill you last night when I saw you kiss her. Oh, yes, I saw you. I was watching — spying, if you like. I don’t care what you call it. I had followed her — I suspected something. She was so different — so changed. She never would wear the flowers I picked for her any more. She seemed to forget I was there. I knew something had come between us. And it was you, curse you! Oh, I’ll make you sorry for it.”
He was working himself up into a fury again — the untamed fury of the Italian peasant thwarted in his heart’s desire. It overrode all the restraint of his training and environment. Eric, amid all his anger and annoyance, felt a thrill of pity for him. Neil Gordon was only a boy still; and he was miserable and beside himself.
“Neil, listen to me,” he said quietly. “You are talking very foolishly. It is not for you to say who shall or shall not be Kilmeny’s friend. Now, you may just as well control yourself and go home like a decent fellow. I am not at all frightened by your threats, and I shall know how to deal with you if you persist in interfering with me or persecuting Kilmeny. I am not the sort of person to put up with that, my lad.”
The restrained power in his tone and look cowed Neil. The latter turned sullenly away, with another muttered curse, and plunged into the shadow of the firs.
Eric, not a little ruffled under all his external composure by this most unexpected and unpleasant encounter, pursued his way along the lane which wound on by the belt of woodland in twist and curve to the Gordon homestead. His heart beat as he thought of Kilmeny. What might she not be suffering? Doubtless Neil had given a very exaggerated and distorted account of what he had seen, and probably her dour relations were very angry with her, poor child. Anxious to avert their wrath as soon as might be, he hurried on, almost forgetting his meeting with Neil. The threats of the latter did not trouble him at all. He thought the angry outburst of a jealous boy mattered but little. What did matter was that Kilmeny was in trouble which his heedlessness had brought upon her.
Presently he found himself before the Gordon house. It was an old building with sharp eaves and dormer windows, its shingles stained a dark gray by long exposure to wind and weather. Faded green shutters hung on the windows of the lower story. Behind it grew a thick wood of spruces. The little yard in front of it was grassy and prim and flowerless; but over the low front door a luxuriant early-flowering rose vine clambered, in a riot of blood-red blossom which contrasted strangely with the general bareness of its surroundings. It seemed to fling itself over the grim old house as if intent on bombarding it with an alien life and joyousne
ss.
Eric knocked at the door, wondering if it might be possible that Kilmeny should come to it. But a moment later it was opened by an elderly woman — a woman of rigid lines from the hem of her lank, dark print dress to the crown of her head, covered with black hair which, despite its few gray threads, was still thick and luxuriant. She had a long, pale face somewhat worn and wrinkled, but possessing a certain harsh comeliness of feature which neither age nor wrinkles had quite destroyed; and her deep-set, light gray eyes were not devoid of suggested kindliness, although they now surveyed Eric with an unconcealed hostility. Her figure, in its merciless dress, was very angular; yet there was about her a dignity of carriage and manner which Eric liked. In any case, he preferred her unsmiling dourness to vulgar garrulity.
He lifted his hat.
“Have I the honour of speaking to Miss Gordon?” he asked.
“I am Janet Gordon,” said the woman stiffly.
“Then I wish to talk with you and your brother.”
“Come in.”
She stepped aside and motioned him to a low brown door opening on the right.
“Go in and sit down. I’ll call Thomas,” she said coldly, as she walked out through the hall.
Eric walked into the parlour and sat down as bidden. He found himself in the most old-fashioned room he had ever seen. The solidly made chairs and tables, of some wood grown dark and polished with age, made even Mrs. Williamson’s “parlour set” of horsehair seem extravagantly modern by contrast. The painted floor was covered with round braided rugs. On the centre table was a lamp, a Bible and some theological volumes contemporary with the square-runged furniture. The walls, wainscoted half way up in wood and covered for the rest with a dark, diamond- patterned paper, were hung with faded engravings, mostly of clerical-looking, bewigged personages in gowns and bands.
But over the high, undecorated black mantel-piece, in a ruddy glow of sunset light striking through the window, hung one which caught and held Eric’s attention to the exclusion of everything else. It was the enlarged “crayon” photograph of a young girl, and, in spite of the crudity of execution, it was easily the center of interest in the room.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 425