The twins did not tell Anthony that they had asked Mrs. Elmsley but he had a pretty good idea that they had. Since they had got acquainted with her they had raved so much about her beauty that he was conscious of a rather ashamed desire to see her. He did not know her name but Jill seemed to think her the most exquisite creature in the world.
“I’m getting jumpy. It’s time Mrs. Elmsley was here,” whispered Jill anxiously to P.G. “I hope she hasn’t forgotten. I’ve heard that artists aren’t very dependable.”
“What is the matter with Anthony?” whispered P.G.
Anthony, looking out of the new, magic window, was also wondering what was the matter with him.
Had he gone quite mad? Or was the window really the magic one of Jill’s pretence?
For she was there, crossing the moonlit lawn with that light step that always made him think of Beatrice, “born under a dancing star.” The next moment she was standing in the doorway. Behind her were dark trees and a purple night sky.
Her sweet face... her eyes... her dark wings of hair... unchanged... unchangeable.
“Betty!” cried Anthony.
“Mums!” cried the twins. “Where is Mrs. Elmsley? Isn’t she coming?”
“God grant she isn’t,” muttered the doctor, who was just behind Betty. He had got through with Jim’s leg sooner than he expected and something in Anthony’s face told him the whole tale. “At least not for a while. Anne, come out with me to the garden. No, not a word of objection. For once I am going to be obeyed.”
Anthony was at the door. He had her hands in his.
“Betty... it’s you! Do you mean to say you’re... they’re... you’re their mother? Of course they told me their name... but it’s such a common one...”
Mums began to laugh because as Jill... who had lived a century in a moment... perfectly understood, she had either to laugh or cry. P.G., less quick at taking the heart out of a mystery, still continued to stand still, staring, with his mouth hanging open.
“Anthony! I didn’t know... I never dreamed. The children didn’t tell me your name... and I had never heard of an Orchard Knob. I’ve had to stick so close to Aunt Henrietta this summer I never went anywhere or heard any gossip. And they pretended you were... they called you... oh, I thought it was just some of their nonsense... oh...”
Everybody seemed to be so balled up that Jill had to come to the rescue. She had never seen anything so amazing as Anthony’s face. Neither had Anne Blythe, who had deliberately disobeyed her husband and gone back to the front door.
“Mums, isn’t Mrs. Elmsley coming? We thought...”
“No, she has one of her bad headaches. She asked me to tell you so with her apologies.”
“Jill,” said Anthony suddenly, “you have been ordering me around all summer. I’m going to have my turn at it now. Go out... go anywhere, you and P.G.... for half an hour. Mrs. Blythe, will you excuse me if I...”
“Ask the same thing? I will. I’ll go and apologize to my husband.”
“And as a reward you may tell Susan Baker everything tomorrow,” said Anthony.
When they came back to say the supper was ready in the dining room they found Anthony and Mums on the settee by the fireplace. Mums had been crying but she looked extraordinarily happy and prettier than they had ever seen her... all the sadness gone.
“Jill,” said Anthony, “there is another chapter to that story I told you here one night.”
“No decent person eavesdrops,” said Dr. Blythe to his wife, who had been drawn back to the sunroom steps.
“I am not a decent person, then,” said Anne, “and neither are you.”
“It was all a dreadful mistake,” went on Anthony.
“I knew it,” said Jill triumphantly.
“She was still wearing my ring... on a chain round her neck... but she’d heard things about me... had she a title, Betty?”
“Not quite as bad as that,” smiled Mums.
“Well, she thought I had forgotten our old compact, so she took the ring off her finger... and we were just two proud, hurt, silly young things...”
“I seemed to have only one object in life,” murmured Mums... “to keep people from thinking I cared.”
“You succeeded,” said Anthony a bit grimly.
“How history repeats itself,” thought Dr. Blythe to himself. “When I thought Anne was engaged to Roy Gardiner...”
“Isn’t that life?” thought Anne. “When I thought Gilbert was engaged to Christine Stuart...”
“But why did you go and marry father?” demanded Jill reproachfully.
“I... I was lonely... and he was nice and good... and I was fond of him,” faltered Mums.
“Shut up, Jill,” said Anthony.
“If she hadn’t, you and P.G. would never have been born,” said Dr. Blythe, coming in with a smile.
“So you see,” said P.G., “and what I want to know is this... is anybody going to have any eats tonight?”
“So you see it’s all right now,” said Anthony. “We’re all going to live here and the parrot room will be yours, Jill. And we’ll start up that old clock since time has begun to function for me again. Mrs. Blythe, will you do us the honour of setting it going?”
“Are you really going to be our dad?” demanded Jill, when she had got her breath.
“As soon as law and gospel can make me.”
“Oh!” Jill gave a rapturous sigh. “That is what P.G. and I have been pretending right along!”
Fancy’s Fool
Esme did not want particularly to spend the weekend at Longmeadow, as the Barrys called their home on the outskirts of Charlottetown.
She would have preferred to wait until she had definitely decided to marry Allardyce before becoming a guest in his home. But Uncle Conrad and Aunt Helen both thought she should go and Esme had been so used all her life to doing exactly what her uncles and aunts on both sides thought she should do that she ran true to form in this as in many other things.
Besides, it was all but settled that she should marry Allardyce. Dr. Blythe, out at Glen St. Mary, who knew the family well, though he had never had anything to do with them in a professional way, told his wife it was a shame. He knew something about Allardyce Barry.
Of course he was considered a great catch. People thought he was a surprisingly great catch for a misty little thing like Esme to pick up. Even her own clan was amazed.
Sometimes Esme thought secretly... she had a great many secret thoughts since she had no especial friend or confidant... that her luck was rather too much for her. She liked Allardyce well enough as a friend... but she did not know... exactly... how she was going to like him as a husband.
Was there anyone else? Decidedly not. It was folly to think about Francis. There never had been any Francis... not really. Esme felt that even imaginative Mrs. Blythe... who lived away out at Glen St. Mary but whom Esme had met several times and liked very much... would feel quite sure about that.
Esme felt sure she ought to feel quite sure herself. Only... she could never manage to feel quite sure. He had seemed so very real in those lovely, long-ago, stolen moments at Birken-trees in the moonlit garden.
Since her childhood she had never met Allardyce’s mother. The Barrys had lived abroad since the death of Allardyce’s father. It was only six months since they had come home and opened up Longmeadow for the summer.
All the girls were “after” Allardyce... so Uncle Conrad said. All except Esme.
Perhaps that was why Allardyce had fallen in love with her. Or perhaps it was just because she was so different from anyone else. She was a pale, lovely thing, delicate and reserved. Her relatives always complained that they could “make nothing of her.” She seemed like a child of twilight. Grey things and starriness were of her. She moved gently and laughed seldom but her little air of sadness was beautiful and bewitching.
“She will never marry,” Anne Blythe told her husband. “She is really too exquisite for the realities of earth.”
“She will likely marry some brute who will misuse her,” said Dr. Blythe. “That kind always do.”
“Anyhow, he has very nice ears,” said Susan Baker, who never had had, so she averred, any chance of marriage.
Men who met Esme always wanted to make her laugh. Allardyce succeeded. That was why she liked him. He said so many whimsical things that one had to laugh.
And had not Francis, long ago, said whimsical things? She was almost sure although she could not remember them. She could only remember him.
“So the ugly ducking has turned out a swan,” twinkled Mrs. Barry when they met... by way of setting Esme at ease.
But Esme, had Mrs. Barry but known it, was not in any special need of that. She was always quite mistress of herself under the fine aloofness which so many mistook for shyness... so many except Mrs. Dr. Blythe and she lived too far away for frequent meetings.
And Esme did not quite like Mrs. Barry’s implication that she had been a plain child who had unaccountably grown up into beauty. She had not been a very pretty child, perhaps, but she had never been accounted an ugly one. And had not Francis once told her...
Esme shook herself. There was no Francis... never had been any Francis. She must remember that if she were going to marry Allardyce Barry and be chatelaine of this beautiful Longmeadow... which was just a little too big and splendid and wonderful, now that it was re-opened.
Esme felt she would have been much more at home in a smaller place... like Ingleside at Glen St. Mary for instance... or... or Birkentrees. She felt suddenly homesick for Birkentrees.
But nobody lived there now. It had been shut up and left to ruin, ever since Uncle John Dalley’s death... owing to some legal tangle she never understood.
She hadn’t seen it for twelve years, although it was only three miles from Uncle Conrad’s place. She really had never wanted to see it again. She knew it must be weed-grown and deserted. And she knew she was a little afraid to see it... without Aunt Hester.
Strange Aunt Hester! Esme, recalling her, shivered.
But she never shivered when she thought of Francis. Sometimes she could feel her little childish hand in his big strong one yet. She never shivered but it frightened her a little. Suppose... suppose... she were to go like Aunt Hester!
She did not see the picture till the next afternoon. Then Allardyce showed her all over the house and when they came to what had been his father’s den it was hanging on the wall in the shadows.
Esme’s cool, white face flushed to a warm rose when she saw it and then turned whiter than ever.
“Who... who is that?” she said faintly... very much afraid of the answer.
“That,” said Allardyce carelessly... he was not much interested in old things and had already made up his mind that he and Esme would not spend much of their time at Long-meadow. There was more fun to be had elsewhere. But it would be a very good place for his mother to spend her declining years. She had always been a little drag on Allardyce. Esme wouldn’t. She would do just as he told her... go just where he wanted to go. And if there were other... ladies... she would never believe tales about them or make a fuss if she did. Dr. Blythe of Glen St. Mary could have told him a different story, but Allardyce did not know Dr. Blythe or would not have had much opinion of his views if he had. He had met Mrs. Blythe once... and tried to flirt with her... but he had not tried a second time and always shrugged his shoulders meaningly when he heard her name mentioned. He said red-headed women were his abomination.
“That,” said Allardyce, “was my great-uncle Francis Barry... a daredevil young sea captain of the sixties. He was captain of a brigantine when he was only seventeen years old. Can you believe it? Took her down to Buenos Aires with a cargo of lumber and died there. They say it broke his mother’s heart. He was the apple of her eye. Luckily hearts don’t break so easily nowadays.”
“Don’t they?” said Esme.
“Of course not... else how could anybody live? But she was a Dalley and there was always something a little queer about them, I’ve been told. Took things much harder than it does to do in this kind of a world. We’ve got to be hard-boiled or we go under. Uncle Francis was a dashing young blade by all accounts. But you’ll have to go to mother if you want family history. She revels in it. But what is the matter, Esme? You don’t look just right, honey. It’s too hot here. Let’s get out where the air is fresh. This old house has got musty through the years. I told mother so when she took a notion to come here. Though I’m glad she did since I’ve met you.”
Esme let him lead her to a vine-screened corner of the veranda. She felt a relief to feel a solid seat under her. She took hard hold of its arms for her comforting.
They at least were real... the grassy lawns around her were real... Allardyce was real... too real.
And Francis was. Or had been real! She had just seen his picture!
But he had died in the sixties. And it was only fourteen years since she had danced with him in the little, locked garden at Birkentrees!
Oh, if she could have a talk about it with Mrs. Blythe! Esme felt that she would understand. Was she going crazy like queer Aunt Hester? In any case she felt that Allardyce ought to know. It was his right.
She had never said a word about it to a living soul. But he must know if she were going to marry him. Could she marry him after this? Would he want to marry her? But as to that she did not greatly care. Francis had been real... sometime... and that was all that mattered.
She told Allardyce the bare bones of it only but as she told it she lived over everything again in detail.
She had been only eight. She was a child whose father and mother were dead and who lived around with various uncles and aunts.
She had come to spend the summer at Birkentrees, the old homestead of the clan. Uncle John Dalley lived there... an oldish man, the oldest of the large family of which her father had been the youngest son.
Aunt Jane, who had never married, lived there, too, and Aunt Hester. Strange Aunt Hester! Aunt Jane was old... at least Esme thought so... but Aunt Hester was not very old... no more than twenty-five, Esme had heard somebody say.
She had been strange in all the summers that Esme had spent at Birkentrees. Esme heard somebody say... she was so quiet that she was always hearing people say things that they would never have dreamed of saying before a more talkative child... that Aunt Hester’s lover had died when she was twenty. So much Esme, sitting on her little stool, her elbows on her chubby knees, her round chin cupped in her hands, had found out as the “grown-ups” laughed and gossiped. And Aunt Hester had never been “the same” since.
Most children were afraid of her but Esme was not. She liked Aunt Hester, who had haunted, tragic eyes and did little but wander up and down the long birch lane of Birkentrees and talk to herself, or to someone she fancied was there with her. This, thought Esme, was what made people call her “queer.”
She had a dead white face and strange, jet-black hair, just as Esme had. Only at that time Esme’s hair always fell over her amber eyes in a neglected fringe, giving her a doggy sort of look.
Sometimes she even ventured to slip one of her little, slender hands... even at eight Esme had very beautiful hands... into Aunt Hester’s cold one and walk silently with her.
“I wouldn’t dare do that for a million dollars,” one of the visiting cousins had said to her extravagantly.
But Aunt Hester did not seem to mind it at all... although as a rule she resented anyone’s company.
“I walk among the shadows,” she told Esme. “They are better company than I find in the sunlight. But you should like the sunlight. I liked it once.”
“I do like the sunlight,” said Esme, “but there is something about the shadows that I like, too.”
“Well, if you like the shadows come with me if you want to,” said Aunt Hester.
Esme loved Birkentrees. And most of all she loved the little garden which she was never allowed to enter... which nobody, as far as she knew, ever entered.
Yet it looked harmless enough, as far as could be seen through the high fence screened with roses and vines run wild.
Esme would have liked to explore it... or thought she would. But one summer twilight, when she was lingering near it, she suddenly felt something strange in the air about her.
She could not have told what it was... could not have described her sensations. But she felt as if the garden was drawing her to it!
Her breath came in quick little gasps. She wanted to yield but she was afraid to. Little fine beads broke out on her forehead. She trembled. There was no one in sight, not even queer Aunt Hester.
Esme put her hands over her eyes and ran blindly to the house.
“Whatever is the matter, Esme?” asked tall, grim, kind Aunt Jane, meeting her in the hall.
“The... the garden wants me,” cried Esme, hardly knowing what she said... and certainly not what she meant.
Aunt Jane looked a little grey.
“You had better not play too near that... that place again,” she said.
The warning was needless. Yet Esme continued to love it.
One of the servants told her it was “haunted.” Esme did not then know what “haunted” meant. When she asked Aunt Jane the latter looked angrier than Esme had ever seen her look and told her she must not listen to the foolish gossip of servants.
There came a summer when she found Aunt Hester much changed. Esme had expected this. She had heard the older people say that Hester was “much better”... so much happier and more contented. Perhaps, they said, she might “come all right” yet.
Certainly Aunt Hester looked happier. She never walked in the birch lane now or talked to herself. Instead, she sat most of the time by the lily pool with the face of one who listened and waited. Esme felt at once that Aunt Hester was simply waiting. And for what?
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 577