He lifted his hand to knock, but before he could do so, the door was flung open and Min herself confronted him on the threshold.
She did not now have on the man’s overcoat which she had worn at the store, and her neat, close-fitting home-spun dress revealed to perfection the full, magnificent curves of her figure. Her splendid hair was braided about her head in a glossy coronet, and her dark eyes were ablaze with ill-suppressed anger. Again Telford was overcome by a sense of her wonderful loveliness. Not all the years of bondage to ill-temper and misguided will had been able to blot out the beauty of that proud, dark face.
She lifted one large but shapely brown hand and pointed to the gate.
“Go!” she said threateningly.
“Mrs. Palmer,” began Telford, but she silenced him with an imperious gesture.
“I don’t want any of your kind here. I hate all you ministers. Did you come here to lecture me? I suppose some of the Corner saints set you on me. You’ll never cross my threshold.”
Telford returned her defiant gaze unflinchingly. His dark-blue eyes, magnetic in their power and sweetness, looked gravely, questioningly, into Min’s stormy orbs. Slowly the fire and anger faded out of her face and her head drooped.
“I ain’t fit for you to talk to anyway,” she said with a sort of sullen humility. “Maybe you mean well but you can’t do me any good. I’m past that now. The Corner saints say I’m possessed of the devil. Perhaps I am — if there is one.”
“I do mean well,” said Telford slowly. “I did not come here to reprove you. I came to help you if I could — if you needed help, Mrs. Palmer—”
“Don’t call me that,” she interrupted passionately. She flung out her hands as if pushing some loathly, invisible thing from her. “I hate the name — as I hated all who ever bore it. I never had anything but wrong and dog-usage from them all. Call me Min — that’s the only name that belongs to me now. Go — why don’t you go? Don’t stand there looking at me like that. I’m not going to change my mind. I don’t want any praying and whining round me. I’ve been well sickened of that. Go!”
Telford threw back his head and looked once more into her eyes. A long look passed between them. Then he silently lifted his cap and, with no word of farewell, he turned and went down to the gate. A bitter sense of defeat and disappointment filled his heart as he drove away.
Min stood in the doorway and watched the sleigh out of sight down the river road. Then she gave a long, shivering sigh that was almost a moan.
“If I had met that man long ago,” she said slowly, as if groping vaguely in some hitherto unsounded depth of consciousness, “I would never have become what I am. I felt that as I looked at him — it all came over me with an awful sickening feeling — just as if we were standing alone somewhere out of the world where there was no need of words to say things. He doesn’t despise me — he wouldn’t sneer at me, bad as I am, like those creatures up there. He could have helped me if we had met in time, but it’s too late now.”
She locked her hands over her eyes and groaned, swaying her body to and fro as one in mortal agony. Presently she looked out again with hard, dry eyes.
“What a fool I am!” she said bitterly. “How the Corner saints would stare if they saw me! I suppose some of them do—” with a glance at the windows of a neighbouring house. “Yes, there’s Mrs. Rawlings staring out and Rose peeking over her shoulder.”
Her face hardened. The old sway of evil passion reasserted itself.
“She shall never come back here — never. Oh, she was a sweet-spoken cat of a thing — but she had claws. I’ve been blamed for all the trouble. But if ever I had a chance, I’d tell that minister how she used to twit and taunt me in that sugary way of hers — how she schemed and plotted against me as long as she could. More fool I to care what he thinks either! I wish I were dead. If ’twasn’t for the child, I’d go and drown myself at that black spring-hole down there — I’d be well out of the way.”
It was a dull grey afternoon a week afterwards when Allan Telford again walked up the river road to the Palmer place. The wind was bitter and he walked with bent head to avoid its fury. His face was pale and worn and he looked years older.
He paused at the rough gate and leaned over it while he scanned the house and its surroundings eagerly. As he looked, the kitchen door opened and Min, clad in the old overcoat, came out and walked swiftly across the yard.
Telford’s eyes followed her with pitiful absorption. He saw her lead a horse from the stable and harness it into a wood-sleigh loaded with bags of grain. Once she paused to fling her arms about the animal’s neck, laying her face against it with a caressing motion.
The pale minister groaned aloud. He longed to snatch her forever from that hard, unwomanly toil and fold her safely away from jeers and scorn in the shelter of his love. He knew it was madness — he had told himself so every hour in which Min’s dark, rebellious face had haunted him — yet none the less was he under its control.
Min led the horse across the yard and left it standing before the kitchen door; she had not seen the bowed figure at the gate. When she reappeared, he saw her dark eyes and the rose-red lustre of her face gleam out from under the old crimson shawl wrapped about her head.
As she caught the horse by the bridle, the kitchen door swung heavily to with a sharp, sudden bang. The horse, a great, powerful, nervous brute, started wildly and then reared in terror.
The ice underfoot was glib and treacherous. Min lost her foothold and fell directly under the horse’s hoofs as they came heavily down. The animal, freed from her detaining hand, sprang forward, dragging the laden sleigh over the prostrate woman.
It had all passed in a moment. The moveless figure lay where it had fallen, one outstretched hand still grasping the whip. Telford sprang over the gate and rushed up the slope like a madman. He flung himself on his knees beside her.
“Min! Min!” he called wildly.
There was no answer. He lifted her in his arms and staggered into the house with his burden, his heart stilling with a horrible fear as he laid her gently down on the old lounge in one corner of the kitchen.
The room was a large one and everything was neat and clean. The fire burned brightly, and a few green plants were in blossom by the south window. Beside them sat a child of about seven years who turned a startled face at Telford’s reckless entrance.
The boy had Min’s dark eyes and perfectly chiselled features, refined by suffering into cameo-like delicacy, and the silken hair fell in soft, waving masses about the spiritual little face. By his side nestled a tiny dog, with satin ears and paws fringed as with ravelled silk.
Telford paid heed to nothing, not even the frightened child. He was as one distraught.
“Min,” he wailed again, striving tremblingly to feel her pulse while cold drops came out on his forehead.
Min’s face was as pallid as marble, save for one heavy bruise across the cheek and a cruel cut at the edge of the dark hair, from which the blood trickled down on the pillow.
She opened her eyes wonderingly at his call, looking up with a dazed, appealing expression of pain and dread. A low moan broke from her white lips. Telford sprang to his feet in a tumult of quivering joy.
“Min, dear,” he said gently, “you have been hurt — not seriously, I hope. I must leave you for a minute while I run for help — I will not be long.”
“Come back,” said Min in a low but distinct tone.
He paused impatiently.
“It is of no use to get help,” Min went on calmly. “I’m dying — I know it. Oh, my God!”
She pressed her hand to her side and writhed. Telford turned desperately to the door. Min raised her arm.
“Come here,” she said resolutely.
He obeyed mutely. She looked up at him with bright, unquailing eyes.
“Don’t you go one step — don’t leave me here to die alone. I’m past help — and I’ve something to say to you. I must say it and I haven’t much time.”
&nb
sp; Telford hardly heeded her in his misery.
“Min, let me go for help — let me do something,” he implored. “You must not die — you must not!”
Min had fallen back, gasping, on the blood-stained pillow.
He knelt beside her and put his arm about the poor, crushed body.
“I must hurry,” she said faintly. “I can’t die with it on my mind. Rose — it’s all hers — all. There was a will — he made it — old Gran’ther Palmer. He always hated me. I found it before he died — and read it. He left everything to her — not a cent to me nor his son’s child — we were to starve — beg. I was like a madwoman. When he died — I hid the will. I meant — to burn it — but I never could. It’s tortured me — night and day — I’ve had no peace. You’ll find it in a box — in my room. Tell her — tell Rose — how wicked I’ve been. And my boy — what will become of him? Rose hates him — she’ll turn him out — or ill-treat him—”
Telford lifted his white, drawn face.
“I will take your child, Min. He shall be to me as my own son.”
An expression of unspeakable relief came into the dying woman’s face.
“It is good — of you. I can die — in peace — now. I’m glad to die — to get clear of it all. I’m tired — of living so. Perhaps — I’ll have a chance — somewhere else. I’ve never — had any — here.”
The dark eyes drooped — closed. Telford moaned shudderingly.
Once again Min opened her eyes and looked straight into his.
“If I had met you — long ago — you would have — loved me — and I would have been — a good woman. It is well for us — for you — that I am — dying. Your path will be clear — you will be good and successful — but you will always — remember me.”
Telford bent and pressed his lips to Min’s pain-blanched mouth.
“Do you think — we will — ever meet again?” she said faintly. “Out there — it’s so dark — God can never — forgive me — I’ve been so — wicked.”
“Min, the all-loving Father is more merciful than man. He will forgive you, if you ask Him, and you will wait for me till I come. I will stay here and do my duty — I will try hard—”
His voice broke. Min’s great black eyes beamed out on him with passionate tenderness. The strong, deep, erring nature yielded at last. An exceeding bitter cry rose to her lips.
“Oh, God — forgive me — forgive me!”
And with the cry, the soul of poor suffering, sinning, sinned-against Min Palmer fled — who shall say whither? Who shall say that her remorseful cry was not heard, even at that late hour, by a Judge more merciful than her fellow creatures?
Telford still knelt on the bare floor, holding in his arms the dead form of the woman he loved — his, all his, in death, as she could never have been in life. Death had bridged the gulf between them.
The room was very silent. To Min’s face had returned something of its girlhood’s innocence. The hard, unlovely lines were all smoothed out. The little cripple crept timidly up to Telford, with the silky head of the dog pressed against his cheek. Telford gathered the distorted little body to his side and looked earnestly into the small face — Min’s face, purified and spiritualized. He would have it near him always. He bent and reverently kissed the cold face, the closed eyelids and the blood-stained brow of the dead woman. Then he stood up.
“Come with me, dear,” he said gently to the child.
The day after the funeral, Allan Telford sat in the study of his little manse among the encircling wintry hills. Close to the window sat Min’s child, his small, beautiful face pressed against the panes, and the bright-eyed dog beside him.
Telford was writing in his journal.
“I shall stay here — close to her grave. I shall see it every time I look from my study window — every time I stand in my pulpit — every time I go in and out among my people. I begin to see wherein I have failed. I shall begin again patiently and humbly. I wrote today to decline the C —— church call. My heart and my work are here.”
He closed the book and bowed his head on it. Outside the snow fell softly; he knew that it was wrapping that new-made grave on the cold, fir-sentinelled hillside with a stainless shroud of infinite purity and peace.
Miss Cordelia’s Accommodation
“Poor little creatures!” said Miss Cordelia compassionately.
She meant the factory children. In her car ride from the school where she taught to the bridge that spanned the river between Pottstown, the sooty little manufacturing village on one side, and Point Pleasant, which was merely a hamlet, on the other, she had seen dozens of them, playing and quarrelling on the streets or peering wistfully out of dingy tenement windows.
“Tomorrow is Saturday,” she reflected, “and they’ve no better place to play in than the back streets and yards. It’s a shame. There’s work for our philanthropists here, but they don’t seem to see it. Well, I’m so sorry for them it hurts me to look at them, but I can’t do anything.”
Miss Cordelia sighed and then brightened up, because she realized that she was turning her back upon Pottstown for two blissful days and going to Point Pleasant, which had just one straggling, elm-shaded street hedging on old-fashioned gardens and cosy little houses and trailing off into the real country in a half-hour’s walk.
Miss Cordelia lived alone in a tiny house at Point Pleasant. It was so tiny that you would have wondered how anyone could live in it.
“But it’s plenty big for a little old maid like me,” Miss Cordelia would have told you. “And it’s my own — I’m queen there. There’s solid comfort in having one spot for your own self. To be sure, if I had less land and more house it would be better.”
Miss Cordelia always laughed here. It was one of her jokes. There was a four-acre field behind the house. Both had been left to her by an uncle. The field was of no use to Miss Cordelia; she didn’t keep a cow and she hadn’t time to make a garden. But she liked her field; when people asked her why she didn’t sell it she said:
“I’m fond of it. I like to walk around in it when the grass grows long. And it may come in handy some time. Mother used to say if you kept anything seven years it would come to use. I’ve had my field a good bit longer than that, but maybe the time will come yet. Meanwhile I rejoice in the fact that I am a landed proprietor to the extent of four acres.”
Miss Cordelia had thought of converting her field into a playground for the factory children and asking detachments of them over on Saturday afternoon. But she knew that her Point Pleasant neighbours would object to this, so that project was dropped.
When Miss Cordelia pushed open her little gate, hung crookedly in a very compact and prim spruce hedge, she stopped in amazement and said, “Well, for pity’s sake!”
Cynthia Ann Flemming, who lived on the other side of the spruce hedge, now came hurrying over.
“Good evening, Cordelia. I have a letter that was left with me for you.”
“But — that — horse,” said Miss Cordelia, with a long breath between every word. “Where did he come from? Tied at my front door — and he’s eaten the tops off every one of my geraniums! Where’s his owner or rider or something?”
The horse in question was a mild-eyed, rather good-looking quadruped, tied by a halter to the elm at Miss Cordelia’s door and contentedly munching a mouthful of geranium stalks. Cynthia Ann came through the hedge with the letter.
“Maybe this will explain,” she said. “Same boy brought it as brought the horse — a little freckly chap mostly all grin and shirtsleeves. Said he was told to take the letter and horse to Miss Cordelia Herry, Elm Street, Point Pleasant, and he couldn’t wait. So he tied the creature in there and left the letter with me. He came half an hour ago. Well, he has played havoc with your geraniums and no mistake.”
Miss Cordelia opened and read her letter. When she finished it she looked at the curious Cynthia Ann solemnly.
“Well, if that isn’t John Drew all over! I suspected he was at the bottom of it as
soon as I laid my eyes on that animal. John Drew is a cousin of mine. He’s been living out at Poplar Valley and he writes me that he has gone out west, and wants me to take ‘old Nap.’ I suppose that is the horse. He says that Nap is getting old and not much use for work and he couldn’t bear the thought of shooting him or selling him to someone who might ill-treat him, so he wants me to take him and be kind to him for old times’ sake. John and I were just like brother and sister when we were children. If this isn’t like him nothing ever was. He was always doing odd things and thinking they were all right. And now he’s off west and here is the horse. If it were a cat or a dog — but a horse!”
“Your four-acre field will come in handy now,” said Cynthia Ann jestingly.
“So it will.” Miss Cordelia spoke absently. “The very thing! Yes, I’ll put him in there.”
“But you don’t really mean that you’re going to keep the horse, are you?” protested Cynthia Ann. “Why, he is no good to you — and think of the expense of feeding him!”
“I’ll keep him for a while,” said Miss Cordelia briskly. “As you say, there is the four-acre field. It will keep him in eating for a while. I always knew that field had a mission. Poor John Drew! I’d like to oblige him for old times’ sake, as he says, although this is as crazy as anything he ever did. But I have a plan. Meanwhile, I can’t feed Nap on geraniums.”
Miss Cordelia always adapted herself quickly and calmly to new circumstances. “It is never any use to get in a stew about things,” she was wont to say. So now she untied Nap gingerly, with many rueful glances at her geraniums, and led him away to the field behind the house, where she tied him safely to a post with such an abundance of knots that there was small fear of his getting away.
When the mystified Cynthia Ann had returned home Miss Cordelia set about getting her tea and thinking over the plan that had come to her concerning her white elephant.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 629