The Old Lady kept her secret and grew young in it. She walked back to the Mayflower hill as long as the Mayflowers lasted; and she always hid in the spruces to see Sylvia Gray go by. Every day she loved her more, and yearned after her more deeply. All the long repressed tenderness of her nature overflowed to this girl who was unconscious of it. She was proud of Sylvia’s grace and beauty, and sweetness of voice and laughter. She began to like the Spencer children because they worshipped Sylvia; she envied Mrs. Spencer because the latter could minister to Sylvia’s needs. Even the egg pedlar seemed a delightful person because he brought news of Sylvia — her social popularity, her professional success, the love and admiration she had won already.
The Old Lady never dreamed of revealing herself to Sylvia. That, in her poverty, was not to be thought of for a moment. It would have been very sweet to know her — sweet to have her come to the old house — sweet to talk to her — to enter into her life. But it might not be. The Old Lady’s pride was still far stronger than her love. It was the one thing she had never sacrificed and never — so she believed — could sacrifice.
II. The June Chapter
There were no Mayflowers in June; but now the Old Lady’s garden was full of blossoms and every morning Sylvia found a bouquet of them by the beech — the perfumed ivory of white narcissus, the flame of tulips, the fairy branches of bleeding-heart, the pink-and-snow of little, thorny, single, sweetbreathed early roses. The Old Lady had no fear of discovery, for the flowers that grew in her garden grew in every other Spencervale garden as well, including the Stewart garden. Chris Stewart, when he was teased about the music teacher, merely smiled and held his peace. Chris knew perfectly well who was the real giver of those flowers. He had made it his business to find out when the Mayflower gossip started. But since it was evident Old Lady Lloyd did not wish it to be known, Chris told no one. Chris had always liked Old Lady Lloyd ever since the day, ten years before, when she had found him crying in the woods with a cut foot and had taken him into her house, and bathed and bound the wound, and given him ten cents to buy candy at the store. The Old Lady went without supper that night because of it, but Chris never knew that.
The Old Lady thought it a most beautiful June. She no longer hated the new days; on the contrary, she welcomed them.
“Every day is an uncommon day now,” she said jubilantly to herself — for did not almost every day bring her a glimpse of Sylvia? Even on rainy days the Old Lady gallantly braved rheumatism to hide behind her clump of dripping spruces and watch Sylvia pass. The only days she could not see her were Sundays; and no Sundays had ever seemed so long to Old Lady Lloyd as those June Sundays did.
One day the egg pedlar had news for her.
“The music teacher is going to sing a solo for a collection piece to-morrow,” he told her.
The Old Lady’s black eyes flashed with interest.
“I didn’t know Miss Gray was a member of the choir,” she said.
“Jined two Sundays ago. I tell you, our music is something worth listening to now. The church’ll be packed to-morrow, I reckon — her name’s gone all over the country for singing. You ought to come and hear it, Miss Lloyd.”
The pedlar said this out of bravado, merely to show he wasn’t scared of the Old Lady, for all her grand airs. The Old Lady made no answer, and he thought he had offended her. He went away, wishing he hadn’t said it. Had he but known it, the Old Lady had forgotten the existence of all and any egg pedlars. He had blotted himself and his insignificance out of her consciousness by his last sentence. All her thoughts, feelings, and wishes were submerged in a very whirlpool of desire to hear Sylvia sing that solo. She went into the house in a tumult and tried to conquer that desire. She could not do it, even thought she summoned all her pride to her aid. Pride said:
“You will have to go to church to hear her. You haven’t fit clothes to go to church in. Think what a figure you will make before them all.”
But, for the first time, a more insistent voice than pride spoke to her soul — and, for the first time, the Old Lady listened to it. It was too true that she had never gone to church since the day on which she had to begin wearing her mother’s silk dresses. The Old Lady herself thought that this was very wicked; and she tried to atone by keeping Sunday very strictly, and always having a little service of her own, morning and evening. She sang three hymns in her cracked voice, prayed aloud, and read a sermon. But she could not bring herself to go to church in her out-of-date clothes — she, who had once set the fashions in Spencervale, and the longer she stayed away, the more impossible it seemed that she should ever again go. Now the impossible had become, not only possible, but insistent. She must go to church and hear Sylvia sing, no matter how ridiculous she appeared, no matter how people talked and laughed at her.
Spencervale congregation had a mild sensation the next afternoon. Just before the opening of service Old Lady Lloyd walked up the aisle and sat down in the long-unoccupied Lloyd pew, in front of the pulpit.
The Old Lady’s very soul was writhing within her. She recalled the reflection she had seen in her mirror before she left — the old black silk in the mode of thirty years agone and the queer little bonnet of shirred black satin. She thought how absurd she must look in the eyes of her world.
As a matter of fact, she did not look in the least absurd. Some women might have; but the Old Lady’s stately distinction of carriage and figure was so subtly commanding that it did away with the consideration of garmenting altogether.
The Old Lady did not know this. But she did know that Mrs. Kimball, the storekeeper’s wife, presently rustled into the next pew in the very latest fashion of fabric and mode; she and Mrs. Kimball were the same age, and there had been a time when the latter had been content to imitate Margaret Lloyd’s costumes at a humble distance. But the storekeeper had proposed, and things were changed now; and there sat poor Old Lady Lloyd, feeling the change bitterly, and half wishing she had not come to church at all.
Then all at once the Angel of Love touched there foolish thoughts, born of vanity and morbid pride, and they melted away as if they had never been. Sylvia Gray had come into the choir, and was sitting just where the afternoon sunshine fell over her beautiful hair like a halo. The Old Lady looked at her in a rapture of satisfied longing and thenceforth the service was blessed to her, as anything is blessed which comes through the medium of unselfish love, whether human or divine. Nay, are they not one and the same, differing in degree only, not in kind?
The Old Lady had never had such a good, satisfying look at Sylvia before. All her former glimpses had been stolen and fleeting. Now she sat and gazed upon her to her hungry heart’s content, lingering delightedly over every little charm and loveliness — the way Sylvia’s shining hair rippled back from her forehead, the sweet little trick she had of dropping quickly her long-lashed eyelids when she encountered too bold or curious a glance, and the slender, beautifully modelled hands — so like Leslie Gray’s hands — that held her hymn book. She was dressed very plainly in a black skirt and a white shirtwaist; but none of the other girls in the choir, with all their fine feathers, could hold a candle to her — as the egg pedlar said to his wife, going home from church.
The Old Lady listened to the opening hymns with keen pleasure. Sylvia’s voice thrilled through and dominated them all. But when the ushers got up to take the collection, an undercurrent of subdued excitement flowed over the congregation. Sylvia rose and came forward to Janet Moore’s side at the organ. The next moment her beautiful voice soared through the building like the very soul of melody — true, clear, powerful, sweet. Nobody in Spencervale had ever listened to such a voice, except Old Lady Lloyd herself, who, in her youth, had heard enough good singing to enable her to be a tolerable judge of it. She realized instantly that this girl of her heart had a great gift — a gift that would some day bring her fame and fortune, if it could be duly trained and developed.
“Oh, I’m so glad I came to church,” thought Old Lady Lloyd.
> When the solo was ended, the Old Lady’s conscience compelled her to drag her eyes and thoughts from Sylvia, and fasten them on the minister, who had been flattering himself all through the opening portion of the service that Old Lady Lloyd had come to church on his account. He was newly settled, having been in charge of the Spencervale congregation only a few months; he was a clever little fellow and he honestly thought it was the fame of his preaching that had brought Old Lady Lloyd out to church.
When the service was over all the Old Lady’s neighbours came to speak to her, with kindly smile and handshake. They thought they ought to encourage her, now that she had made a start in the right direction; the Old Lady liked their cordiality, and liked it none the less because she detected in it the same unconscious respect and deference she had been wont to receive in the old days — a respect and deference which her personality compelled from all who approached her. The Old Lady was surprised to find that she could command it still, in defiance of unfashionable bonnet and ancient attire.
Janet Moore and Sylvia Gray walked home from church together. “Did you see Old Lady Lloyd out to-day?” asked Janet. “I was amazed when she walked in. She has never been to church in my recollection. What a quaint old figure she is! She’s very rich, you know, but she wears her mother’s old clothes and never gets a new thing. Some people think she is mean; but,” concluded Janet charitably, “I believe it is simply eccentricity.”
“I felt that was Miss Lloyd as soon as I saw her, although I had never seen her before,” said Sylvia dreamily. “I have been wishing to see her — for a certain reason. She has a very striking face. I should like to meet her — to know her.”
“I don’t think it’s likely you ever will,” said Janet carelessly. “She doesn’t like young people and she never goes anywhere. I don’t think I’d like to know her. I’d be afraid of her — she has such stately ways and such strange, piercing eyes.”
“I shouldn’t be afraid of her,” said Sylvia to herself, as she turned into the Spencer lane. “But I don’t expect I’ll ever become acquainted with her. If she knew who I am I suppose she would dislike me. I suppose she never suspects that I am Leslie Gray’s daughter.”
The minister, thinking it well to strike while the iron was hot, went up to call on Old Lady Lloyd the very next afternoon. He went in fear and trembling, for he had heard things about Old Lady Lloyd; but she made herself so agreeable in her high-bred fashion that he was delighted, and told his wife when he went home that Spencervale people didn’t understand Miss Lloyd. This was perfectly true; but it is by no means certain that the minister understood her either.
He made only one mistake in tact, but, as the Old Lady did not snub him for it, he never knew he made it. When he was leaving he said, “I hope we shall see you at church next Sunday, Miss Lloyd.”
“Indeed, you will,” said the Old Lady emphatically.
III. The July Chapter
The first day of July Sylvia found a little birch bark boat full of strawberries at the beech in the hollow. They were the earliest of the season; the Old Lady had found them in one of her secret haunts. They would have been a toothsome addition to the Old Lady’s own slender bill of fare; but she never thought of eating them. She got far more pleasure out of the thought of Sylvia’s enjoying them for her tea. Thereafter the strawberries alternated with the flowers as long as they lasted, and then came blueberries and raspberries. The blueberries grew far away and the Old Lady had many a tramp after them. Sometimes her bones ached at night because of it; but what cared the Old Lady for that? Bone ache is easier to endure than soul ache; and the Old Lady’s soul had stopped aching for the first time in many year. It was being nourished with heavenly manna.
One evening Crooked Jack came up to fix something that had gone wrong with the Old Lady’s well. The Old Lady wandered affably out to him; for she knew he had been working at the Spencers’ all day, and there might be crumbs of information about Sylvia to be picked up.
“I reckon the music teacher’s feeling pretty blue this evening,” Crooked Jack remarked, after straining the Old Lady’s patience to the last verge of human endurance by expatiating on William Spencer’s new pump, and Mrs. Spencer’s new washing-machine, and Amelia Spencer’s new young man.
“Why?” asked the Old Lady, turning very pale. Had anything happened to Sylvia?
“Well, she’s been invited to a big party at Mrs. Moore’s brother’s in town, and she hasn’t got a dress to go in,” said Crooked Jack. “They’re great swells and everybody will be got up regardless. Mrs. Spencer was telling me about it. She says Miss Gray can’t afford a new dress because she’s helping to pay her aunt’s doctor’s bills. She says she’s sure Miss Gray feels awful disappointed over it, though she doesn’t let on. But Mrs. Spencer says she knows she was crying after she went to bed last night.”
The Old Lady turned and went into the house abruptly. This was dreadful. Sylvia must go to that party — she MUST. But how was it to be managed? Through the Old Lady’s brain passed wild thoughts of her mother’s silk dresses. But none of them would be suitable, even if there were time to make one over. Never had the Old Lady so bitterly regretted her vanished wealth.
“I’ve only two dollars in the house,” she said, “and I’ve got to live on that till the next day the egg pedlar comes round. Is there anything I can sell — ANYTHING? Yes, yes, the grape jug!”
Up to this time, the Old Lady would as soon have thought of trying to sell her head as the grape jug. The grape jug was two hundred years old and had been in the Lloyd family ever since it was a jug at all. It was a big, pot-bellied affair, festooned with pink-gilt grapes, and with a verse of poetry printed on one side, and it had been given as a wedding present to the Old Lady’s great-grandmother. As long as the Old Lady could remember it had sat on the top shelf in the cupboard in the sitting-room wall, far too precious ever to be used.
Two years before, a woman who collected old china had explored Spencervale, and, getting word of the grape jug, had boldly invaded the old Lloyd place and offered to buy it. She never, to her dying day, forgot the reception the Old Lady gave her; but, being wise in her day and generation, she left her card, saying that if Miss Lloyd ever changed her mind about selling the jug, she would find that she, the aforesaid collector, had not changed hers about buying it. People who make a hobby of heirloom china must meekly overlook snubs, and this particular person had never seen anything she coveted so much as that grape jug.
The Old Lady had torn the card to pieces; but she remembered the name and address. She went to the cupboard and took down the beloved jug.
“I never thought to part with it,” she said wistfully, “but Sylvia must have a dress, and there is no other way. And, after all, when I’m gone, who would there be to have it? Strangers would get it then — it might as well go to them now. I’ll have to go to town to-morrow morning, for there’s no time to lose if the party is Friday night. I haven’t been to town for ten years. I dread the thought of going, more than parting with the jug. But for Sylvia’s sake!”
It was all over Spencervale by the next morning that Old Lady Lloyd had gone to town, carrying a carefully guarded box. Everybody wondered why she went; most people supposed she had become too frightened to keep her money in a black box below her bed, when there had been two burglaries over at Carmody, and had taken it to the bank.
The Old Lady sought out the address of the china collector, trembling with fear that she might be dead or gone. But the collector was there, very much alive, and as keenly anxious to possess the grape jug as ever. The Old Lady, pallid with the pain of her trampled pride, sold the grape jug and went away, believing that her great-grandmother must have turned over in her grave at the moment of the transaction. Old Lady Lloyd felt like a traitor to her traditions.
But she went unflinchingly to a big store and, guided by that special Providence which looks after simple-minded old souls in their dangerous excursions into the world, found a sympathetic clerk who knew just w
hat she wanted and got it for her. The Old Lady selected a very dainty muslin gown, with gloves and slippers in keeping; and she ordered it sent at once, expressage prepaid, to Miss Sylvia Gray, in care of William Spencer, Spencervale.
Then she paid down the money — the whole price of the jug, minus a dollar and a half for railroad fare — with a grand, careless air and departed. As she marched erectly down the aisle of the store, she encountered a sleek, portly, prosperous man coming in. As their eyes met, the man started and his bland face flushed crimson; he lifted his hat and bowed confusedly. But the Old Lady looked through him as if he wasn’t there, and passed on with not a sign of recognition about her. He took one step after her, then stopped and turned away, with a rather disagreeable smile and a shrug of his shoulders.
Nobody would have guessed, as the Old Lady swept out, how her heart was seething with abhorrence and scorn. She would not have had the courage to come to town, even for Sylvia’s sake, if she had thought she would meet Andrew Cameron. The mere sight of him opened up anew a sealed fountain of bitterness in her soul; but the thought of Sylvia somehow stemmed the torrent, and presently the Old Lady was smiling rather triumphantly, thinking rightly that she had come off best in that unwelcome encounter. SHE, at any rate, had not faltered and coloured, and lost her presence of mind.
“It is little wonder HE did,” thought the Old Lady vindictively. It pleased her that Andrew Cameron should lose, before her, the front of adamant he presented to the world. He was her cousin and the only living creature Old Lady Lloyd hated, and she hated and despised him with all the intensity of her intense nature. She and hers had sustained grievous wrong at his hands, and the Old Lady was convinced that she would rather die than take any notice of his existence.
Presently, she resolutely put Andrew Cameron out of her mind. It was desecration to think of him and Sylvia together. When she laid her weary head on her pillow that night she was so happy that even the thought of the vacant shelf in the room below, where the grape jug had always been, gave her only a momentary pang.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 534