The Complete Works of L M Montgomery

by L. M. Montgomery

  Cecil Fenwick didn’t go away. He stayed right on in Avonlea, and the Maxwells blossomed out socially in his honor and tried to give him a good time. Mrs. Maxwell gave a party for him. I got a card — but you may be very sure I didn’t go, although Nancy thought I was crazy not to. Then every one else gave parties in honor of Mr. Fenwick and I was invited and never went. Wilhelmina Mercer came and pleaded and scolded and told me if I avoided Mr. Fenwick like that he would think I still cherished bitterness against him, and he wouldn’t make any advances towards a reconciliation. Wilhelmina means well, but she hasn’t a great deal of sense.

  Cecil Fenwick seemed to be a great favorite with everybody, young and old. He was very rich, too, and Wilhelmina declared that half the girls were after him.

  “If it wasn’t for you, Miss Holmes, I believe I’d have a try for him myself, in spite of his gray hair and quick temper — for Mrs. Maxwell says he has a pretty quick temper, but it’s all over in a minute,” said Wilhelmina, half in jest and wholly in earnest.

  As for me, I gave up going out at all, even to church. I fretted and pined and lost my appetite and never wrote a line in my blank book. Nancy was half frantic and insisted on dosing me with her favorite patent pills. I took them meekly, because it is a waste of time and energy to oppose Nancy, but, of course, they didn’t do me any good. My trouble was too deep-seated for pills to cure. If ever a woman was punished for telling a lie I was that woman. I stopped my subscription to the Weekly Advocate because it still carried that wretched porous plaster advertisement, and I couldn’t bear to see it. If it hadn’t been for that I would never have thought of Fenwick for a name, and all this trouble would have been averted.

  One evening, when I was moping in my room, Nancy came up.

  “There’s a gentleman in the parlor asking for you, Miss

  Charlotte.”

  My heart gave just one horrible bounce.

  “What — sort of a gentleman, Nancy?” I faltered.

  “I think it’s that Fenwick man that there’s been such a time about,” said Nancy, who didn’t know anything about my imaginary escapades, “and he looks to be mad clean through about something, for such a scowl I never seen.”

  “Tell him I’ll be down directly, Nancy,” I said quite calmly.

  As soon as Nancy had clumped downstairs again I put on my lace fichu and put two hankies in my belt, for I thought I’d probably need more than one. Then I hunted up an old Advocate for proof, and down I went to the parlor. I know exactly how a criminal feels going to execution, and I’ve been opposed to capital punishment ever since.

  I opened the parlor door and went in, carefully closing it behind me, for Nancy has a deplorable habit of listening in the hall. Then my legs gave out completely, and I couldn’t have walked another step to save my life. I just stood there, my hand on the knob, trembling like a leaf.

  A man was standing by the south window looking out; he wheeled around as I went in, and, as Nancy said, he had a scowl on and looked angry clear through. He was very handsome, and his gray hair gave him such a distinguished look. I recalled this afterward, but just at the moment you may be quite sure I wasn’t thinking about it at all.

  Then all at once a strange thing happened. The scowl went right off his face and the anger out of his eyes. He looked astonished, and then foolish. I saw the color creeping up into his cheeks. As for me, I still stood there staring at him, not able to say a single word.

  “Miss Holmes, I presume,” he said at last, in a deep, thrilling voice. “I — I — oh, confound it! I have called — I heard some foolish stories and I came here in a rage. I’ve been a fool — I know now they weren’t true. Just excuse me and I’ll go away and kick myself.”

  “No,” I said, finding my voice with a gasp, “you mustn’t go until you’ve heard the truth. It’s dreadful enough, but not as dreadful as you might otherwise think. Those — those stories — I have a confession to make. I did tell them, but I didn’t know there was such a person as Cecil Fenwick in existence.”

  He looked puzzled, as well he might. Then he smiled, took my hand and led me away from the door — to the knob of which I was still holding with all my might — to the sofa.

  “Let’s sit down and talk it over ‘comfy,’” he said.

  I just confessed the whole shameful business. It was terribly humiliating, but it served me right. I told him how people were always twitting me for never having had a beau, and how I had told them I had; and then I showed him the porous plaster advertisement.

  He heard me right through without a word, and then he threw back his big, curly, gray head and laughed.

  “This clears up a great many mysterious hints I’ve been receiving ever since I came to Avonlea,” he said, “and finally a Mrs. Gilbert came to my sister this afternoon with a long farrago of nonsense about the love affair I had once had with some Charlotte Holmes here. She declared you had told her about it yourself. I confess I flamed up. I’m a peppery chap, and I thought — I thought — oh, confound it, it might as well out: I thought you were some lank old maid who was amusing herself telling ridiculous stories about me. When you came into the room I knew that, whoever was to blame, you were not.”

  “But I was,” I said ruefully. “It wasn’t right of me to tell such a story — and it was very silly, too. But who would ever have supposed that there could be real Cecil Fenwick who had lived in Blakely? I never heard of such a coincidence.”

  “It’s more than a coincidence,” said Mr. Fenwick decidedly. “It’s predestination; that is what it is. And now let’s forget it and talk of something else.”

  We talked of something else — or at least Mr. Fenwick did, for I was too ashamed to say much — so long that Nancy got restive and clumped through the hall every five minutes; but Mr. Fenwick never took the hint. When he finally went away he asked if he might come again.

  “It’s time we made up that old quarrel, you know,” he said, laughing.

  And I, an old maid of forty, caught myself blushing like a girl. But I felt like a girl, for it was such a relief to have that explanation all over. I couldn’t even feel angry with Adella Gilbert. She was always a mischief maker, and when a woman is born that way she is more to be pitied than blamed. I wrote a poem in the blank book before I went to sleep; I hadn’t written anything for a month, and it was lovely to be at it once more.

  Mr. Fenwick did come again — the very next evening, but one. And

  he came so often after that that even Nancy got resigned to him.

  One day I had to tell her something. I shrank from doing it, for

  I feared it would make her feel badly.

  “Oh, I’ve been expecting to hear it,” she said grimly. “I felt the minute that man came into the house he brought trouble with him. Well, Miss Charlotte, I wish you happiness. I don’t know how the climate of California will agree with me, but I suppose I’ll have to put up with it.”

  “But, Nancy,” I said, “I can’t expect you to go away out there with me. It’s too much to ask of you.”

  “And where else would I be going?” demanded Nancy in genuine astonishment. “How under the canopy could you keep house without me? I’m not going to trust you to the mercies of a yellow Chinee with a pig-tail. Where you go I go, Miss Charlotte, and there’s an end of it.”

  I was very glad, for I hated to think of parting with Nancy even to go with Cecil. As for the blank book, I haven’t told my husband about it yet, but I mean to some day. And I’ve subscribed for the Weekly Advocate again.

  HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER

  “We must invite your Aunt Jane, of course,” said Mrs. Spencer.

  Rachel made a protesting movement with her large, white, shapely hands — hands which were so different from the thin, dark, twisted ones folded on the table opposite her. The difference was not caused by hard work or the lack of it; Rachel had worked hard all her life. It was a difference inherent in temperament. The Spencers, no matter what they did, or how hard they labored, all had plump
, smooth, white hands, with firm, supple fingers; the Chiswicks, even those who toiled not, neither did they spin, had hard, knotted, twisted ones. Moreover, the contrast went deeper than externals, and twined itself with the innermost fibers of life, and thought, and action.

  “I don’t see why we must invite Aunt Jane,” said Rachel, with as much impatience as her soft, throaty voice could express. “Aunt Jane doesn’t like me, and I don’t like Aunt Jane.”

  “I’m sure I don’t see why you don’t like her,” said Mrs. Spencer.

  “It’s ungrateful of you. She has always been very kind to you.”

  “She has always been very kind with one hand,” smiled Rachel. “I remember the first time I ever saw Aunt Jane. I was six years old. She held out to me a small velvet pincushion with beads on it. And then, because I did not, in my shyness, thank her quite as promptly as I should have done, she rapped my head with her bethimbled finger to ‘teach me better manners.’ It hurt horribly — I’ve always had a tender head. And that has been Aunt Jane’s way ever since. When I grew too big for the thimble treatment she used her tongue instead — and that hurt worse. And you know, mother, how she used to talk about my engagement. She is able to spoil the whole atmosphere if she happens to come in a bad humor. I don’t want her.”

  “She must be invited. People would talk so if she wasn’t.”

  “I don’t see why they should. She’s only my great-aunt by marriage. I wouldn’t mind in the least if people did talk. They’ll talk anyway — you know that, mother.”

  “Oh, we must have her,” said Mrs. Spencer, with the indifferent finality that marked all her words and decisions — a finality against which it was seldom of any avail to struggle. People, who knew, rarely attempted it; strangers occasionally did, misled by the deceit of appearances.

  Isabella Spencer was a wisp of a woman, with a pale, pretty face, uncertainly-colored, long-lashed grayish eyes, and great masses of dull, soft, silky brown hair. She had delicate aquiline features and a small, babyish red mouth. She looked as if a breath would sway her. The truth was that a tornado would hardly have caused her to swerve an inch from her chosen path.

  For a moment Rachel looked rebellious; then she yielded, as she generally did in all differences of opinion with her mother. It was not worth while to quarrel over the comparatively unimportant matter of Aunt Jane’s invitation. A quarrel might be inevitable later on; Rachel wanted to save all her resources for that. She gave her shoulders a shrug, and wrote Aunt Jane’s name down on the wedding list in her large, somewhat untidy handwriting — a handwriting which always seemed to irritate her mother. Rachel never could understand this irritation. She could never guess that it was because her writing looked so much like that in a certain packet of faded letters which Mrs. Spencer kept at the bottom of an old horsehair trunk in her bedroom. They were postmarked from seaports all over the world. Mrs. Spencer never read them or looked at them; but she remembered every dash and curve of the handwriting.

  Isabella Spencer had overcome many things in her life by the sheer force and persistency of her will. But she could not get the better of heredity. Rachel was her father’s daughter at all points, and Isabella Spencer escaped hating her for it only by loving her the more fiercely because of it. Even so, there were many times when she had to avert her eyes from Rachel’s face because of the pang of the more subtle remembrances; and never, since her child was born, could Isabella Spencer bear to gaze on that child’s face in sleep.

  Rachel was to be married to Frank Bell in a fortnight’s time. Mrs. Spencer was pleased with the match. She was very fond of Frank, and his farm was so near to her own that she would not lose Rachel altogether. Rachel fondly believed that her mother would not lose her at all; but Isabella Spencer, wiser by olden experience, knew what her daughter’s marriage must mean to her, and steeled her heart to bear it with what fortitude she might.

  They were in the sitting-room, deciding on the wedding guests and other details. The September sunshine was coming in through the waving boughs of the apple tree that grew close up to the low window. The glints wavered over Rachel’s face, as white as a wood lily, with only a faint dream of rose in the cheeks. She wore her sleek, golden hair in a quaint arch around it. Her forehead was very broad and white. She was fresh and young and hopeful. The mother’s heart contracted in a spasm of pain as she looked at her. How like the girl was to — to — to the Spencers! Those easy, curving outlines, those large, mirthful blue eyes, that finely molded chin! Isabella Spencer shut her lips firmly and crushed down some unbidden, unwelcome memories.

  “There will be about sixty guests, all told,” she said, as if she were thinking of nothing else. “We must move the furniture out of this room and set the supper-table here. The dining-room is too small. We must borrow Mrs. Bell’s forks and spoons. She offered to lend them. I’d never have been willing to ask her. The damask table cloths with the ribbon pattern must be bleached to-morrow. Nobody else in Avonlea has such tablecloths. And we’ll put the little dining-room table on the hall landing, upstairs, for the presents.”

  Rachel was not thinking about the presents, or the housewifely details of the wedding. Her breath was coming quicker, and the faint blush on her smooth cheeks had deepened to crimson. She knew that a critical moment was approaching. With a steady hand she wrote the last name on her list and drew a line under it.

  “Well, have you finished?” asked her mother impatiently. “Hand it here and let me look over it to make sure that you haven’t left anybody out that should be in.”

  Rachel passed the paper across the table in silence. The room seemed to her to have grown very still. She could hear the flies buzzing on the panes, the soft purr of the wind about the low eaves and through the apple boughs, the jerky beating of her own heart. She felt frightened and nervous, but resolute.

  Mrs. Spencer glanced down the list, murmuring the names aloud and nodding approval at each. But when she came to the last name, she did not utter it. She cast a black glance at Rachel, and a spark leaped up in the depths of the pale eyes. On her face were anger, amazement, incredulity, the last predominating.

  The final name on the list of wedding guests was the name of

  David Spencer. David Spencer lived alone in a little cottage

  down at the Cove. He was a combination of sailor and fisherman.

  He was also Isabella Spencer’s husband and Rachel’s father.

  “Rachel Spencer, have you taken leave of your senses? What do you mean by such nonsense as this?”

  “I simply mean that I am going to invite my father to my wedding,” answered Rachel quietly.

  “Not in my house,” cried Mrs. Spencer, her lips as white as if her fiery tone had scathed them.

  Rachel leaned forward, folded her large, capable hands deliberately on the table, and gazed unflinchingly into her mother’s bitter face. Her fright and nervousness were gone. Now that the conflict was actually on she found herself rather enjoying it. She wondered a little at herself, and thought that she must be wicked. She was not given to self-analysis, or she might have concluded that it was the sudden assertion of her own personality, so long dominated by her mother’s, which she was finding so agreeable.

  “Then there will be no wedding, mother,” she said. “Frank and I will simply go to the manse, be married, and go home. If I cannot invite my father to see me married, no one else shall be invited.”

  Her lips narrowed tightly. For the first time in her life Isabella Spencer saw a reflection of herself looking back at her from her daughter’s face — a strange, indefinable resemblance that was more of soul and spirit than of flesh and blood. In spite of her anger her heart thrilled to it. As never before, she realized that this girl was her own and her husband’s child, a living bond between them wherein their conflicting natures mingled and were reconciled. She realized too, that Rachel, so long sweetly meek and obedient, meant to have her own way in this case — and would have it.

  “I must say that I can’t see why
you are so set on having your father see you married,” she said with a bitter sneer. “HE has never remembered that he is your father. He cares nothing about you — never did care.”

  Rachel took no notice of this taunt. It had no power to hurt her, its venom being neutralized by a secret knowledge of her own in which her mother had no share.

  “Either I shall invite my father to my wedding, or I shall not have a wedding,” she repeated steadily, adopting her mother’s own effective tactics of repetition undistracted by argument.

  “Invite him then,” snapped Mrs. Spencer, with the ungraceful anger of a woman, long accustomed to having her own way, compelled for once to yield. “It’ll be like chips in porridge anyhow — neither good nor harm. He won’t come.”

  Rachel made no response. Now that the battle was over, and the victory won, she found herself tremulously on the verge of tears. She rose quickly and went upstairs to her own room, a dim little place shadowed by the white birches growing thickly outside — a virginal room, where everything bespoke the maiden. She lay down on the blue and white patchwork quilt on her bed, and cried softly and bitterly.

  Her heart, at this crisis in her life, yearned for her father, who was almost a stranger to her. She knew that her mother had probably spoken the truth when she said that he would not come. Rachel felt that her marriage vows would be lacking in some indefinable sacredness if her father were not by to hear them spoken.

  Twenty-five years before this, David Spencer and Isabella Chiswick had been married. Spiteful people said there could be no doubt that Isabella had married David for love, since he had neither lands nor money to tempt her into a match of bargain and sale. David was a handsome fellow, with the blood of a seafaring race in his veins.