Agnes looked about her more anxiously. Wiser in matters of sea and shore than her companion, there were some indications she did not like.
Young Si, who was standing with Snuffy their skids, lowered his spyglass with a start.
“It is Agnes Bentley and — and — that boarder of theirs,” he said anxiously, “and they’ve gone out with Little Ev in that wretched, leaky tub of his. Where are their eyes that they can’t see a squall coming up?”
“An’ Little Ev don’t know as much about managing a boat as a cat!” exclaimed Snuffy excitedly. “Sign ’em to come back.”
Si shook his head. “They’re too far out. I don’t know that the squall will amount to very much. In a good boat, with someone who knew how to manage it, they’d be all right. But with Little Ev—” He began walking restlessly up and down the narrow platform.
The boat was now some distance out. The breeze had stiffened to a slow strong wind and the dull-grey level of the sea was whipped into white-caps.
Agnes bent towards Ethel. “It’s getting too rough. I think we’d better go back. I’m afraid we’re in for a thunder squall. Look at the clouds.”
A long, sullen muttering verified her words.
“Little Ev,” she shouted, “we want to go in.”
Little Ev, thus recalled to things about him, looked around in alarm. The girls questioned each other with glances of dismay. The sky had grown very black, and the peals of thunder came louder and more continuously. A jagged bolt of lightning hurtled over the horizon. Over land and sea was “the green, malignant light of coming storm.”
Little Ev brought the boat’s head abruptly round as a few heavy drops of rain fell.
“Ev, the boat is leaking!” shrieked Agnes, above the wind. “The water’s coming in!”
“Bail her out then,” shouted Ev, struggling with the sail. “There’s two cans under the seat. I’ve got to lower this sail. Bail her out.”
“I’ll help you,” said Ethel.
She was very pale, but her manner was calm. Both girls bailed energetically.
Young Si, watching through the glass, saw them. He dropped it and ran to his boat, white and resolute.
“They’ve sprung a leak. Here, Curtis, launch the boat. We’ve got to go out or Ev will drown them.”
They shot out from the shore just as the downpour came, blotting out sea and land in one driving sheet of white rain.
“Young Si is coming off for us,” said Agnes. “We’ll be all right if he gets here in time. This boat is going to sink, sure.”
Little Ev was completely demoralized by fear. The girls bailed unceasingly, but the water gained every minute. Young Si was none too soon.
“Jump, Ev!” he shouted as his boat shot alongside. “Jump for your life!”
He dragged Ethel Lennox in as he spoke. Agnes sprang from one boat to the other like a cat, and Little Ev jumped just as a thunderous crash seemed to burst above them and air and sky were filled with blue flame.
The danger was past, for the squall had few difficulties for Si and Snuffy. When they reached the shore, Agnes, who had quite recovered from her fright, tucked her dripping skirts about her and announced her determination to go straight home with Snuffy.
“I can’t get any wetter than I am,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll send Pa down in the buggy for Miss Lennox. Light the fire in your shanty, Si, and let her get dry. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Si picked Ethel up in his strong arms and carried her into the fish-house. He placed her on one of the low benches and hurriedly began to kindle a fire. Ethel sat up dazedly and pushed back the dripping masses of her bright hair. Young Si turned and looked down at her with a passionate light in his eyes. She put out her cold, wet hands wistfully.
“Oh, Miles!” she whispered.
Outside, the wind shook the frail building and tore the shuddering sea to pieces. The rain poured down. It was already settling in for a night of storm. But, inside, Young Si’s fire was casting cheery flames over the rude room, and Young Si himself was kneeling by Ethel Lennox with his arm about her and her head on his broad shoulder. There were happy tears in her eyes and her voice quivered as she said, “Miles, can you forgive me? If you knew how bitterly I have repented—”
“Never speak of the past again, my sweet. In my lonely days and nights down here by the sea, I have forgotten all but my love.”
“Miles, how did you come here? I thought you were in Europe.”
“I did travel at first. I came down here by chance, and resolved to cut myself utterly adrift from my old life and see if I could not forget you. I was not very successful.” He smiled down into her eyes. “And you were going away tomorrow. How perilously near we have been to not meeting! But how are we going to explain all this to our friends along shore?”
“I think we had better not explain it at all. I will go away tomorrow, as I intended, and you can quietly follow soon. Let ‘Young Si’ remain the mystery he has always been.”
“That will be best — decidedly so. They would never understand if we did tell them. And I daresay they would be very much disappointed to find I was not a murderer or a forger or something of that sort. They have always credited me with an evil past. And you and I will go back to our own world, Ethel. You will be welcome there now, sweet — my family, too, have learned a lesson, and will do anything to promote my happiness.”
Agnes drove Ethel Lennox to the station next day. The fierce wind that had swept over land and sea seemed to have blown away all the hazy vapours and oppressive heats in the air, and the morning dawned as clear and fresh as if the sad old earth with all her passionate tears had cleansed herself from sin and stain and come forth radiantly pure and sweet. Ethel bubbled over with joyousness. Agnes wondered at the change in her.
“Good-bye, Miss Lennox,” she said wistfully. “You’ll come back to see us some time again, won’t you?”
“Perhaps,” smiled Ethel, “and if not, Agnes, you must come and see me. Some day I may tell you a secret.”
About a week later Young Si suddenly vanished, and his disappearance was a nine-day’s talk along shore. His departure was as mysterious as his advent. It leaked out that he had quietly disposed of his boat and shanty to Snuffy Curtis, sent his mackerel off and, that done, slipped from the Pointers’ lives, never more to re-enter them.
Little Ev was the last of the Pointers to see him tramping along the road to the station in the dusk of the autumn twilight. And the next morning Agnes Bentley, going out of doors before the others, found on the doorstep a basket containing a small, vociferous black kitten with a card attached to its neck. On it was written: “Will Agnes please befriend Witch in memory of Young Si?”
A Patent Medicine Testimonial
“You might as well try to move the rock of Gibraltar as attempt to change Uncle Abimelech’s mind when it is once made up,” said Murray gloomily.
Murray is like dear old Dad; he gets discouraged rather easily. Now, I’m not like that; I’m more like Mother’s folks. As Uncle Abimelech has never failed to tell me when I have annoyed him, I’m “all Foster.” Uncle Abimelech doesn’t like the Fosters. But I’m glad I take after them. If I had folded my hands and sat down meekly when Uncle Abimelech made known his good will and pleasure regarding Murray and me after Father’s death, Murray would never have got to college — nor I either, for that matter. Only I wouldn’t have minded that very much. I just wanted to go to college because Murray did. I couldn’t be separated from him. We were twins and had always been together.
As for Uncle Abimelech’s mind, I knew that he never had been known to change it. But, as he himself was fond of saying, there has to be a first time for everything, and I had determined that this was to be the first time for him. I hadn’t any idea how I was going to bring it about; but it just had to be done, and I’m not “all Foster” for nothing.
I knew I would have to depend on my own thinkers. Murray is clever at books and dissecting dead things, but he couldn’t help me ou
t in this, even if he hadn’t settled beforehand that there was no use in opposing Uncle Abimelech.
“I’m going up to the garret to think this out, Murray,” I said solemnly. “Don’t let anybody disturb me, and if Uncle Abimelech comes over don’t tell him where I am. If I don’t come down in time to get tea, get it yourself. I shall not leave the garret until I have thought of some way to change Uncle Abimelech’s mind.”
“Then you’ll be a prisoner there for the term of your natural life, dear sis,” said Murray sceptically. “You’re a clever girl, Prue — and you’ve got enough decision for two — but you’ll never get the better of Uncle Abimelech.”
“We’ll see,” I said resolutely, and up to the garret I went. I shut the door and bolted it good and fast to make sure. Then I piled some old cushions in the window seat — for one might as well be comfortable when one is thinking as not — and went over the whole ground from the beginning.
Outside the wind was thrashing the broad, leafy top of the maple whose tallest twigs reached to the funny grey eaves of our old house. One roly-poly little sparrow blew or flew to the sill and sat there for a minute, looking at me with knowing eyes. Down below I could see Murray in a corner of the yard, pottering over a sick duck. He had set its broken leg and was nursing it back to health. Anyone except Uncle Abimelech could see that Murray was simply born to be a doctor and that it was flying in the face of Providence to think of making him anything else.
From the garret windows I could see all over the farm, for the house is on the hill end of it. I could see all the dear old fields and the spring meadow and the beech woods in the southwest corner. And beyond the orchard were the two grey barns and down below at the right-hand corner was the garden with all my sweet peas fluttering over the fences and trellises like a horde of butterflies. It was a dear old place and both Murray and I loved every stick and stone on it, but there was no reason why we should go on living there when Murray didn’t like farming. And it wasn’t our own, anyhow. It all belonged to Uncle Abimelech.
Father and Murray and I had always lived here together. Father’s health broke down during his college course. That was one reason why Uncle Abimelech was set against Murray going to college, although Murray is as chubby and sturdy a fellow as you could wish to see. Anybody with Foster in him would be that.
To go back to Father. The doctors told him that his only chance of recovering his strength was an open-air life, so Father rented one of Uncle Abimelech’s farms and there he lived for the rest of his days. He did not get strong again until it was too late for college, and he was a square peg in a round hole all his life, as he used to tell us. Mother died before we could remember, so Murray and Dad and I were everything to each other. We were very happy too, although we were bossed by Uncle Abimelech more or less. But he meant it well and Father didn’t mind.
Then Father died — oh, that was a dreadful time! I hurried over it in my thinking-out. Of course when Murray and I came to look our position squarely in the face we found that we were dependent on Uncle Abimelech for everything, even the roof over our heads. We were literally as poor as church mice and even poorer, for at least they get churches rent-free.
Murray’s heart was set on going to college and studying medicine. He asked Uncle Abimelech to lend him enough money to get a start with and then he could work his own way along and pay back the loan in due time. Uncle Abimelech is rich, and Murray and I are his nearest relatives. But he simply wouldn’t listen to Murray’s plan.
“I put my foot firmly down on such nonsense,” he said. “And you know that when I put my foot down something squashes.”
It was not that Uncle Abimelech was miserly or that he grudged us assistance. Not at all. He was ready to deal generously by us, but it must be in his own way. His way was this. Murray and I were to stay on the farm, and when Murray was twenty-one Uncle Abimelech said he would deed the farm to him — make him a present of it out and out.
“It’s a good farm, Murray,” he said. “Your father never made more than a bare living out of it because he wasn’t strong enough to work it properly — that’s what he got out of a college course, by the way. But you are strong enough and ambitious enough to do well.”
But Murray couldn’t be a farmer, that was all there was to it. I told Uncle Abimelech so, firmly, and I talked to him for days about it, but Uncle Abimelech never wavered. He sat and listened to me with a quizzical smile on that handsome, clean-shaven, ruddy old face of his, with its cut-granite features. And in the end he said,
“You ought to be the one to go to college if either of you did, Prue. You would make a capital lawyer, if I believed in the higher education of women, but I don’t. Murray can take or leave the farm as he chooses. If he prefers the latter alternative, well and good. But he gets no help from me. You’re a foolish little girl, Prue, to back him up in this nonsense of his.”
It makes me angry to be called a little girl when I put up my hair a year ago, and Uncle Abimelech knows it. I gave up arguing with him. I knew it was no use anyway.
I thought it all over in the garret. But no way out of the dilemma could I see. I had eaten up all the apples I had brought with me and I felt flabby and disconsolate. The sight of Uncle Abimelech stalking up the lane, as erect and lordly as usual, served to deepen my gloom.
I picked up the paper my apples had been wrapped in and looked it over gloomily. Then I saw something, and Uncle Abimelech was delivered into my hand.
The whole plan of campaign unrolled itself before me, and I fairly laughed in glee, looking out of the garret window right down on the little bald spot on the top of Uncle Abimelech’s head, as he stood laying down the law to Murray about something.
When Uncle Abimelech had gone I went down to Murray.
“Buddy,” I said, “I’ve thought of a plan. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but you are to consent to it without knowing. I think it will quench Uncle Abimelech, but you must have perfect confidence in me. You must back me up no matter what I do and let me have my own way in it all.”
“All right, sis,” said Murray.
“That isn’t solemn enough,” I protested. “I’m serious. Promise solemnly.”
“I promise solemnly, ‘cross my heart,’” said Murray, looking like an owl.
“Very well. Remember that your role is to lie low and say nothing, like Brer Rabbit. Alloway’s Anodyne Liniment is pretty good stuff, isn’t it, Murray? It cured your sprain after you had tried everything else, didn’t it?”
“Yes. But I don’t see the connection.”
“It isn’t necessary that you should. Well, what with your sprain and my rheumatics I think I can manage it.”
“Look here, Prue. Are you sure that long brooding over our troubles up in the garret hasn’t turned your brain?”
“My brain is all right. Now leave me, minion. There is that which I would do.”
Murray grinned and went. I wrote a letter, took it down to the office, and mailed it. For a week there was nothing more to do.
There is just one trait of Uncle Abimelech’s disposition more marked than his fondness for having his own way and that one thing is family pride. The Melvilles are a very old family. The name dates back to the Norman conquest when a certain Roger de Melville, who was an ancestor of ours, went over to England with William the Conqueror. I don’t think the Melvilles ever did anything worth recording in history since. To be sure, as far back as we can trace, none of them has ever done anything bad either. They have been honest, respectable folks and I think that is something worth being proud of.
But Uncle Abimelech pinned his family pride to Roger de Melville. He had the Melville coat of arms and our family tree, made out by an eminent genealogist, framed and hung up in his library, and he would not have done anything that would not have chimed in with that coat of arms and a conquering ancestor for the world.
At the end of a week I got an answer to my letter. It was what I wanted. I wrote again and sent a parcel. In three weeks’
time the storm burst.
One day I saw Uncle Abimelech striding up the lane. He had a big newspaper clutched in his hand. I turned to Murray, who was poring over a book of anatomy in the corner.
“Murray, Uncle Abimelech is coming. There is going to be a battle royal between us. Allow me to remind you of your promise.”
“To lie low and say nothing? That’s the cue, isn’t it, sis?”
“Unless Uncle Abimelech appeals to you. In that case you are to back me up.”
Then Uncle Abimelech stalked in. He was purple with rage. Old Roger de Melville himself never could have looked fiercer. I did feel a quake or two, but I faced Uncle Abimelech undauntedly. No use in having your name on the roll of Battle Abbey if you can’t stand your ground.
“Prudence, what does this mean?” thundered Uncle Abimelech, as he flung the newspaper down on the table. Murray got up and peered over. Then he whistled. He started to say something but remembered just in time and stopped. But he did give me a black look. Murray has a sneaking pride of name too, although he won’t own up to it and laughs at Uncle Abimelech.
I looked at the paper and began to laugh. We did look so funny, Murray and I, in that advertisement. It took up the whole page. At the top were our photos, half life-size, and underneath our names and addresses printed out in full. Below was the letter I had written to the Alloway Anodyne Liniment folks. It was a florid testimonial to the virtues of their liniment. I said that it had cured Murray’s sprain after all other remedies had failed and that, when I had been left a partial wreck from a very bad attack of rheumatic fever, the only thing that restored my joints and muscles to working order was Alloway’s Anodyne Liniment, and so on.
It was all true enough, although I dare say old Aunt Sarah-from-the-Hollow’s rubbing had as much to do with the cures as the liniment. But that is neither here nor there.
“What does this mean, Prudence?” said Uncle Abimelech again. He was quivering with wrath, but I was as cool as a cucumber, and Murray stood like a graven image.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 622