“Now don’t be worrying yourself over that, Nillie,” he protested. “Why, I don’t mind a litter, bless you!”
How good and jolly he was, that Mr. Malcolm MacPherson! Such songs as he sang, such stories as he told, such a breezy, unconventional atmosphere as he brought into that prim little house, where stagnant dullness had reigned for years! He worshipped Aunt Olivia, and his worship took the concrete form of presents galore. He brought her a present almost every visit — generally some article of jewelry. Bracelets, rings, chains, ear-drops, lockets, bangles, were showered upon our precise little aunt; she accepted them deprecatingly, but never wore them. This hurt him a little, but she assured him she would wear them all sometimes.
“I am not used to jewelry, Mr. MacPherson,” she would tell him.
Her engagement ring she did wear — it was a rather “loud” combination of engraved gold and opals. Sometimes we caught her turning it on her finger with a very troubled face.
“I would be sorry for Mr. Malcolm MacPherson if he were not so much in love with her,” said Peggy. “But as he thinks that she is perfection he doesn’t need sympathy.”
“I am sorry for Aunt Olivia,” I said. “Yes, Peggy, I am. Mr. MacPherson is a splendid man, but Aunt Olivia is a born old maid, and it is outraging her very nature to be anything else. Don’t you see how it’s hurting her? His big, splendid man-ways are harrowing her very soul up — she can’t get out of her little, narrow groove, and it is killing her to be pulled out.”
“Nonsense!” said Peggy. Then she added with a laugh,
“Mary, did you ever see anything so funny as Aunt Olivia sitting on ‘Mr. Malcolm MacPherson’s’ knee?”
It WAS funny. Aunt Olivia thought it very unbecoming to sit there before us, but he made her do it. He would say, with his big, jolly laugh, “Don’t be minding the little girls,” and pull her down on his knee and hold her there. To my dying day I shall never forget the expression on the poor little woman’s face.
But, as the days went by and Mr. Malcolm MacPherson began to insist on a date being set for the wedding, Aunt Olivia grew to have a strangely disturbed look. She became very quiet, and never laughed except under protest. Also, she showed signs of petulance when any of us, but especially father, teased her about her beau. I pitied her, for I think I understood better than the others what her feelings really were. But even I was not prepared for what did happen. I would not have believed that Aunt Olivia could do it. I thought that her desire for marriage in the abstract would outweigh the disadvantages of the concrete. But one can never reckon with real, bred-in-the-bone old-maidism.
One morning Mr. Malcolm MacPherson told us all that he was coming up that evening to make Aunt Olivia set the day. Peggy and I laughingly approved, telling him that it was high time for him to assert his authority, and he went off in great good humour across the river field, whistling a Highland strathspey. But Aunt Olivia looked like a martyr. She had a fierce attack of housecleaning that day, and put everything in flawless order, even to the corners.
“As if there was going to be a funeral in the house,” sniffed Peggy.
Peggy and I were up in the south-west room at dusk that evening, piecing a quilt, when we heard Mr. Malcolm MacPherson shouting out in the hall below to know if anyone was home. I ran out to the landing, but as I did so Aunt Olivia came out of her room, brushed past me, and flitted downstairs.
“Mr. MacPherson,” I heard her say with double-distilled primness, “will you please come into the parlour? I have something to say to you.”
They went in, and I returned to the south-west room.
“Peg, there’s trouble brewing,” I said. “I’m sure of it by Aunt Olivia’s face, it was GRAY. And she has gone down ALONE — and shut the door.”
“I am going to hear what she says to him,” said Peggy resolutely. “It is her own fault — she has spoiled us by always insisting that we should be present at their interviews. That poor man has had to do his courting under our very eyes. Come on, Mary.”
The south-west room was directly over the parlour and there was an open stovepipe-hole leading up therefrom. Peggy removed the hat box that was on it, and we both deliberately and shamelessly crouched down and listened with all our might.
It was easy enough to hear what Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was saying.
“I’ve come up to get the date settled, Nillie, as I told you. Come now, little woman, name the day.”
SMACK!
“Don’t, Mr. MacPherson,” said Aunt Olivia. She spoke as a woman who has keyed herself up to the doing of some very distasteful task and is anxious to have it over and done with as soon as possible. “There is something I must say to you. I cannot marry you, Mr. MacPherson.”
There was a pause. I would have given much to have seen the pair of them. When Mr. Malcolm MacPherson spoke his voice was that of blank, uncomprehending amazement.
“Nillie, what is it you are meaning?” he said.
“I cannot marry you, Mr. MacPherson,” repeated Aunt Olivia.
“Why not?” Surprise was giving way to dismay.
“I don’t think you will understand, Mr. MacPherson,” said Aunt Olivia, faintly. “You don’t realize what it means for a woman to give up everything — her own home and friends and all her past life, so to speak, and go far away with a stranger.”
“Why, I suppose it will be rather hard. But, Nillie, Avonlea isn’t very far away — not more than twelve miles, if it will be that.”
“Twelve miles! It might as well be at the other side of the world to all intents and purposes,” said Aunt Olivia obstinately. “I don’t know a living soul there, except Rachel Lynde.”
“Why didn’t you say so before I bought the place, then? But it’s not too late. I can be selling it and buying right here in East Grafton if that will please you — though there isn’t half as nice a place to be had. But I’ll fix it up somehow!”
“No, Mr. MacPherson,” said Aunt Olivia firmly, “that doesn’t cover the difficulty. I knew you would not understand. My ways are not your ways and I cannot make them over. For — you track mud in — and — and — you don’t care whether things are tidy or not.”
Poor Aunt Olivia had to be Aunt Olivia; if she were being burned at the stake I verily believe she would have dragged some grotesqueness into the tragedy of the moment.
“The devil!” said Mr. Malcolm MacPherson — not profanely or angrily, but as in sheer bewilderment. Then he added, “Nillie, you must be joking. It’s careless enough I am — the west isn’t a good place to learn finicky ways — but you can teach me. You’re not going to throw me over because I track mud in!”
“I cannot marry you, Mr. MacPherson,” said Aunt Olivia again.
“You can’t be meaning it!” he exclaimed, because he was beginning to understand that she did mean it, although it was impossible for his man mind to understand anything else about the puzzle. “Nillie, it’s breaking my heart you are! I’ll do anything — go anywhere — be anything you want — only don’t be going back on me like this.”
“I cannot marry you, Mr. MacPherson,” said Aunt Olivia for the fourth time.
“Nillie!” exclaimed Mr. Malcolm MacPherson. There was such real agony in his tone that Peggy and I were suddenly stricken with contrition. What were we doing? We had no right to be listening to this pitiful interview. The pain and protest in his voice had suddenly banished all the humour from it, and left naught but the bare, stark tragedy. We rose and tiptoed out of the room, wholesomely ashamed of ourselves.
When Mr. Malcolm MacPherson had gone, after an hour of useless pleading, Aunt Olivia came up to us, pale and prim and determined, and told us that there was to be no wedding. We could not pretend surprise, but Peggy ventured a faint protest.
“Oh, Aunt Olivia, do you think you have done right?”
“It was the only thing I could do,” said Aunt Olivia stonily. “I could not marry Mr. Malcolm MacPherson and I told him so. Please tell your father — and kindly say nothing
more to me about the matter.”
Then Aunt Olivia went downstairs, got a broom, and swept up the mud Mr. Malcolm MacPherson had tracked over the steps.
Peggy and I went home and told father. We felt very flat, but there was nothing to be done or said. Father laughed at the whole thing, but I could not laugh. I was sorry for Mr. Malcolm MacPherson and, though I was angry with her, I was sorry for Aunt Olivia, too. Plainly she felt badly enough over her vanished hopes and plans, but she had developed a strange and baffling reserve which nothing could pierce.
“It’s nothing but a chronic case of old-maidism,” said father impatiently.
Things were very dull for a week. We saw no more of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson and we missed him dreadfully. Aunt Olivia was inscrutable, and worked with fierceness at superfluous tasks.
One evening father came home with some news. “Malcolm MacPherson is leaving on the 7:30 train for the west,” he said. “He has rented the Avonlea place and he’s off. They say he is mad as a hatter at the trick Olivia played on him.”
After tea Peggy and I went over to see Aunt Olivia, who had asked our advice about a wrapper. She was sewing as for dear life, and her face was primmer and colder than ever. I wondered if she knew of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson’s departure. Delicacy forbade me to mention it but Peggy had no such scruples.
“Well, Aunt Olivia, your beau is off,” she announced cheerfully. “You won’t be bothered with him again. He is leaving on the mail train for the west.”
Aunt Olivia dropped her sewing and stood up. I have never seen anything like the transformation that came over her. It was so thorough and sudden as to be almost uncanny. The old maid vanished completely, and in her place was a woman, full to the lips with primitive emotion and pain.
“What shall I do?” she cried in a terrible voice. “Mary — Peggy — what shall I do?”
It was almost a shriek. Peggy turned pale.
“Do you care?” she said stupidly.
“Care! Girls, I shall DIE if Malcolm MacPherson goes away! I have been mad — I must have been mad. I have almost died of loneliness since I sent him away. But I thought he would come back! I must see him — there is time to reach the station before the train goes if I go by the fields.”
She took a wild step towards the door, but I caught her back with a sudden mind-vision of Aunt Olivia flying bareheaded and distraught across the fields.
“Wait a moment, Aunt Olivia. Peggy, run home and get father to harness Dick in the buggy as quickly as he can. We’ll drive Aunt Olivia to the station. We’ll get you there in time, Aunty.”
Peggy flew, and Aunt Olivia dashed upstairs. I lingered behind to pick up her sewing, and when I got to her room she had her hat and cape on. Spread out on the bed were all the boxes of gifts which Mr. Malcolm MacPherson had brought her, and Aunt Olivia was stringing their contents feverishly about her person. Rings, three brooches, a locket, three chains and a watch all went on — anyway and anyhow. A wonderful sight it was to see Aunt Olivia bedizened like that!
“I would never wear them before — but I’ll put them all on now to show him I’m sorry,” she gasped, with trembling lips.
When the three of us crowded into the buggy, Aunt Olivia grasped the whip before we could prevent her and, leaning out, gave poor Dick such a lash as he had never felt in his life before. He went tearing down the steep, stony, fast-darkening road in a fashion which made Peggy and me cry out in alarm. Aunt Olivia was usually the most timid of women, but now she didn’t seem to know what fear was. She kept whipping and urging poor Dick the whole way to the station, quite oblivious to our assurances that there was plenty of time. The people who met us that night must have thought we were quite mad. I held on the reins, Peggy gripped the swaying side of the buggy, and Aunt Olivia bent forward, hat and hair blowing back from her set face with its strangely crimson cheeks, and plied the whip. In such a guise did we whirl through the village and over the two-mile station road.
When we drove up to the station, where the train was shunting amid the shadows, Aunt Olivia made a flying leap from the buggy and ran along the platform, with her cape streaming behind her and all her brooches and chains glittering in the lights. I tossed the reins to a boy standing near and we followed. Just under the glare of the station lamp we saw Mr. Malcolm MacPherson, grip in hand. Fortunately no one else was very near, but it would have been all the same had they been the centre of a crowd. Aunt Olivia fairly flung herself against him.
“Malcolm,” she cried, “don’t go — don’t go — I’ll marry you — I’ll go anywhere — and I don’t care how much mud you bring in!”
That truly Aunt Olivia touch relieved the tension of the situation a little. Mr. MacPherson put his arm about her and drew her back into the shadows.
“There, there,” he soothed. “Of course I won’t be going. Don’t cry, Nillie-girl.”
“And you’ll come right back with me now?” implored Aunt Olivia, clinging to him as if she feared he would be whisked away from her yet if she let go for a moment.
“Of course, of course,” he said.
Peggy got a chance home with a friend, and Aunt Olivia and Mr. Malcolm MacPherson and I drove back in the buggy. Mr. MacPherson held Aunt Olivia on his knee because there was no room, but she would have sat there, I think, had there been a dozen vacant seats. She clung to him in the most barefaced fashion, and all her former primness and reserve were swept away completely. She kissed him a dozen times or more and told him she loved him — and I did not even smile, nor did I want to. Somehow, it did not seem in the least funny to me then, nor does it now, although it doubtless will to others. There was too much real intensity of feeling in it all to leave any room for the ridiculous. So wrapped up in each other were they that I did not even feel superfluous.
I set them safely down in Aunt Olivia’s yard and turned homeward, completely forgotten by the pair. But in the moonlight, which flooded the front of the house, I saw something that testified eloquently to the transformation in Aunt Olivia. It had rained that afternoon and the yard was muddy. Nevertheless, she went in at her front door and took Mr. Malcolm MacPherson in with her without even a glance at the scraper!
The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham’s
I refused to take that class in Sunday School the first time I was asked. It was not that I objected to teaching in the Sunday School. On the contrary I rather liked the idea; but it was the Rev. Mr. Allan who asked me, and it had always been a matter of principle with me never to do anything a man asked me to do if I could help it. I was noted for that. It saves a great deal of trouble and it simplifies everything beautifully. I had always disliked men. It must have been born in me, because, as far back as I can remember, an antipathy to men and dogs was one of my strongest characteristics. I was noted for that. My experiences through life only served to deepen it. The more I saw of men, the more I liked cats.
So, of course, when the Rev. Allan asked me if I would consent to take a class in Sunday School, I said no in a fashion calculated to chasten him wholesomely. If he had sent his wife the first time, as he did the second, it would have been wiser. People generally do what Mrs. Allan asks them to do because they know it saves time.
Mrs. Allan talked smoothly for half an hour before she mentioned the Sunday School, and paid me several compliments. Mrs. Allan is famous for her tact. Tact is a faculty for meandering around to a given point instead of making a bee-line. I have no tact. I am noted for that. As soon as Mrs. Allan’s conversation came in sight of the Sunday School, I, who knew all along whither it was tending, said, straight out,
“What class do you want me to teach?”
Mrs. Allan was so surprised that she forgot to be tactful, and answered plainly for once in her life,
“There are two classes — one of boys and one of girls — needing a teacher. I have been teaching the girls’ class, but I shall have to give it up for a little time on account of the baby’s health. You may have your choice, Miss MacPherson.”
“Then I shall take the boys,” I said decidedly. I am noted for my decision. “Since they have to grow up to be men it’s well to train them properly betimes. Nuisances they are bound to become under any circumstances; but if they are taken in hand young enough they may not grow up to be such nuisances as they otherwise would and that will be some unfortunate woman’s gain.” Mrs. Allan looked dubious. I knew she had expected me to choose the girls.
“They are a very wild set of boys,” she said.
“I never knew boys who weren’t,” I retorted.
“I — I — think perhaps you would like the girls best,” said Mrs. Allan hesitatingly. If it had not been for one thing — which I would never in this world have admitted to Mrs. Allan — I might have liked the girls’ class best myself. But the truth was, Anne Shirley was in that class; and Anne Shirley was the one living human being that I was afraid of. Not that I disliked her. But she had such a habit of asking weird, unexpected questions, which a Philadelphia lawyer couldn’t answer. Miss Rogerson had that class once and Anne routed her, horse, foot and artillery. I wasn’t going to undertake a class with a walking interrogation point in it like that. Besides, I thought Mrs. Allan required a slight snub. Ministers’ wives are rather apt to think they can run everything and everybody, if they are not wholesomely corrected now and again.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 544