“Alice Graham,” replied Mrs. Grant, who had a habit of speaking for her children, none of whom had the Carston nose.
“Alice Graham! That child!” exclaimed Selwyn in astonishment.
Leo roared. “Come, come, Sel, perhaps we’re not very progressive here in Croyden, but we don’t actually stand still. Girls are apt to stretch out some between ten and twenty, you know. You old bachelors think nobody ever grows up. Why, Sel, you’re grey around your temples.”
“Too well I know it, but a man’s own brother shouldn’t be the first to cast such things up to him. I’ll admit, since I come to think of it, that Alice has probably grown bigger. Is she any better-looking than she used to be?”
“Alice is a charming girl,” said Mrs. Grant impressively. “She is a beauty and she is also sweet and sensible, which beauties are not always. We are all very much pleased with Leo’s choice. But we have really no more time to spare just now. The wedding is at seven o’clock and it is four already.”
“Is there anybody you can send to the station for my luggage?” asked Selwyn. “Luckily I have a new suit, otherwise I shouldn’t have the face to go.”
“Well, I must be off,” said Mrs. Grant. “Father, take Selwyn away so that I shan’t be tempted to waste time talking to him.”
In the library father and son looked at each other affectionately.
“Dad, it’s a blessing to see you just the same. I’m a little dizzy with all these changes. Bertha grown up and Leo within an inch of being married! To Alice Graham at that, whom I can’t think of yet as anything else than the long-legged, black-eyed imp of mischief she was when a kiddy. To tell you the truth, Dad, I don’t feel in a mood for going to a wedding at Wish-ton-wish tonight. I’m sure you don’t either. You’ve always hated fusses. Can’t we shirk it?”
They smiled at each other with chummy remembrance of many a family festival they had “shirked” together in the old days. But Mr. Grant shook his head. “Not this time, sonny. There are some things a decent man can’t shirk and one of them is his own boy’s wedding. It’s a nuisance, but I must go through with it. You’ll understand how it is when you’re a family man yourself. By the way, why aren’t you a family man by this time? Why haven’t I been put to the bother and inconvenience of attending your wedding before now, son?”
Selwyn laughed, with a little vibrant note of bitterness in the laughter, which the father’s quick ears detected. “I’ve been too busy with law books, Dad, to find me a wife.”
Mr. Grant shook his bushy grey head. “That’s not the real reason, son. The world has a wife for every man; if he hasn’t found her by the time he’s thirty-five, there’s some real reason for it. Well, I don’t want to pry into yours, but I hope it’s a sound one and not a mean, sneaking, selfish sort of reason. Perhaps you’ll choose a Madam Selwyn some day yet. In case you should I’m going to give you a small bit of good advice. Your mother — now, she’s a splendid woman, Selwyn, a splendid woman. She can’t be matched as a housekeeper and she has improved my finances until I don’t know them when I meet them. She’s been a good wife and a good mother. If I were a young man I’d court her and marry her over again, that I would. But, son, when you pick a wife pick one with a nice little commonplace nose, not a family nose. Never marry a woman with a family nose, son.”
A woman with a family nose came into the library at this juncture and beamed maternally upon them both. “There’s a bite for you in the dining room. After you’ve eaten it you must dress. Mind you brush your hair well down, Father. The green room is ready for you, Selwyn. Tomorrow I’ll have a good talk with you, but tonight I’ll be too busy to remember you’re around. How are we all going to get over to Wish-ton-wish? Leo and Bertha are going in the pony carriage. It won’t hold a third passenger. You’ll have to squeeze in with Father and me in the buggy, Selwyn.”
“By no means,” replied Selwyn briskly. “I’ll walk over to Wish-ton-wish. Ifs only half a mile across lots. I suppose the old way is still open?”
“It ought to be,” answered Mr. Grant drily; “Leo has kept it well trodden. If you’ve forgotten how it runs he can tell you.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” said Selwyn, a little brusquely. He had his own reasons for remembering the wood path. Leo had not been the first Grant to go courting to Wish-ton-wish.
When he started, the moon was rising round and red and hazy in an eastern hill-gap. The autumn air was mild and spicy. Long shadows stretched across the fields on his right and silvery mosaics patterned the floor of the old beechwood lane. Selwyn walked slowly. He was thinking of Esme Graham or, rather, of the girl who had been Esme Graham, and wondering if he would see her at the wedding. It was probable, and he did not want to see her. In spite of ten years’ effort, he did not think he could yet look upon Tom St. Clair’s wife with the proper calm indifference. At the best, it would taint his own memory of her; he would never again be able to think of her as Esme Graham but only as Esme St. Clair.
The Grahams had come to Wish-ton-wish eleven years before. There was a big family of girls of whom the tall, brown-haired Esme was the oldest. There was one summer during which Selwyn Grant had haunted Wish-ton-wish, the merry comrade of the younger girls, the boyishly, silently devoted lover of Esme. Tom St. Clair had always been there too, in his right as second cousin, Selwyn had supposed. One day he found out that Tom and Esme had been engaged ever since she was sixteen; one of her sisters told him. That had been all. He had gone away soon after, and some time later a letter from home made casual mention of Tom St. Clair’s marriage.
He narrowly missed being late for the wedding ceremony. The bridal party entered the parlour at Wish-ton-wish at the same moment as he slipped in by another door. Selwyn almost whistled with amazement at sight of the bride. That Alice Graham, that tall, stately, blushing young woman, with her masses of dead-black hair, frosted over by the film of wedding veil! Could that be the scrawny little tomboy of ten years ago? She looked not unlike Esme, with that subtle family resemblance that is quite independent of feature and colouring.
Where was Esme? Selwyn cast his eyes furtively over the assembled guests while the minister read the marriage ceremony. He recognized several of the Graham girls but he did not see Esme, although Tom St. Clair, stout and florid and prosperous-looking, was standing on a chair in a faraway corner, peering over the heads of the women.
After the turmoil of handshakings and congratulations, Selwyn fled to the cool, still outdoors, where the rosy glow of Chinese lanterns mingled with the waves of moonshine to make fairyland. And there he met her, as she came out of the house by a side door, a tall, slender woman in some glistening, clinging garment, with white flowers shining like stars in the coils of her brown hair. In the soft glow she looked even more beautiful than in the days of her girlhood, and Selwyn’s heart throbbed dangerously at sight of her.
“Esme!” he said involuntarily.
She started, and he had an idea that she changed colour, although it was too dim to be sure. “Selwyn!” she exclaimed, putting out her hands. “Why, Selwyn Grant! Is it really you? Or are you such stuff as dreams are made of? I did not know you were here. I did not know you were home.”
He caught her hands and held them tightly, drawing her a little closer to him, forgetting that she was Tom St. Clair’s wife, remembering only that she was the woman to whom he had given all his love and life’s devotion, to the entire beggaring of his heart.
“I reached home only four hours ago, and was haled straightway here to Leo’s wedding. I’m dizzy, Esme. I can’t adjust my old conceptions to this new state of affairs all at once. It seems ridiculous to think that Leo and Alice are married. I’m sure they can’t be really grown up.”
Esme laughed as she drew away her hands. “We are all ten years older,” she said lightly.
“Not you. You are more beautiful than ever, Esme. That sunflower compliment is permissible in an old friend, isn’t it?”
“This mellow glow is kinder to me than sunlight n
ow. I am thirty, you know, Selwyn.”
“And I have some grey hairs,” he confessed. “I knew I had them but I had a sneaking hope that other folks didn’t until Leo destroyed it today. These young brothers and sisters who won’t stay children are nuisances. You’ll be telling me next thing that ‘Baby’ is grown up.”
“‘Baby’ is eighteen and has a beau,” laughed Esme. “And I give you fair warning that she insists on being called Laura now. Do you want to come for a walk with me — down under the beeches to the old lane gate? I came out to see if the fresh air would do my bit of a headache good. I shall have to help with the supper later on.”
They went slowly across the lawn and turned into a dim, moonlight lane beyond, their old favourite ramble. Selwyn felt like a man in a dream, a pleasant dream from which he dreads to awaken. The voices and laughter echoing out from the house died away behind them and the great silence of the night fell about them as they came to the old gate, beyond which was a range of shining, moonlight-misted fields.
For a little while neither of them spoke. The woman looked out across the white spaces and the man watched the glimmering curve of her neck and the soft darkness of her rich hair. How virginal, how sacred, she looked! The thought of Tom St. Clair was a sacrilege.
“It’s nice to see you again, Selwyn,” said Esme frankly at last. “There are so few of our old set left, and so many of the babies grown up. Sometimes I don’t know my own world, it has changed so. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. You give me a pleasant sensation of really belonging here. I’d be lonesome tonight if I dared. I’m going to miss Alice so much. There will be only Mother and Baby and I left now. Our family circle has dwindled woefully.”
“Mother and Baby and you!” Selwyn felt his head whirling again. “Why, where is Tom?”
He felt that it was an idiotic question, but it slipped from his tongue before he could catch it. Esme turned her head and looked at him wonderingly. He knew that in the sunlight her eyes were as mistily blue as early meadow violets, but here they looked dark and unfathomably tender.
“Tom?” she said perplexedly. “Do you mean Tom St. Clair? He is here, of course, he and his wife. Didn’t you see her? That pretty woman in pale pink, Lil Meredith. Why, you used to know Lil, didn’t you? One of the Uxbridge Merediths?”
To the day of his death Selwyn Grant will firmly believe that if he had not clutched fast hold of the top bar of the gate he would have tumbled down on the moss under the beeches in speechless astonishment. All the surprises of that surprising evening were as nothing to this. He had a swift conviction that there were no words in the English language that could fully express his feelings and that it would be a waste of time to try to find any. Therefore he laid hold of the first baldly commonplace ones that came handy and said tamely, “I thought you were married to Tom.”
“You — thought — I — was — married — to — Tom!” repeated Esme slowly. “And have you thought that all these years, Selwyn Grant?”
“Yes, I have. Is it any wonder? You were engaged to Tom when I went away, Jenny told me you were. And a year later Bertha wrote me a letter in which she made some reference to Tom’s marriage. She didn’t say to whom, but hadn’t I the right to suppose it was to you?”
“Oh!” The word was partly a sigh and partly a little cry of long-concealed, long-denied pain. “It’s been all a funny misunderstanding. Tom and I were engaged once — a boy-and-girl affair in the beginning. Then we both found out that we had made a mistake — that what we had thought was love was merely the affection of good comrades. We broke our engagement shortly before you went away. All the older girls knew it was broken but I suppose nobody mentioned the matter to Jen. She was such a child, we never thought about her. And you’ve thought I was Tom’s wife all this time? It’s — funny.”
“Funny. You mean tragic! Look here, Esme, I’m not going to risk any more misunderstanding. There’s nothing for it but plain talk when matters get to such a state as this. I love you — and I’ve loved you ever since I met you. I went away because I could not stay here and see you married to another man. I’ve stayed away for the same reason. Esme, is it too late? Did you ever care anything for me?”
“Yes, I did,” she said slowly.
“Do you care still?” he asked.
She hid her face against his shoulder. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Then we’ll go back to the house and be married,” he said joyfully.
Esme broke away and stared at him. “Married!”
“Yes, married. We’ve wasted ten years and we’re not going to waste another minute. We’re not, I say.”
“Selwyn! It’s impossible.”
“I have expurgated that word from my dictionary. It’s the very simplest thing when you look at it in an unprejudiced way. Here is a ready-made wedding and decorations and assembled guests, a minister on the spot and a state where no licence is required. You have a very pretty new dress on and you love me. I have a plain gold ring on my little finger that will fit you. Aren’t all the conditions fulfilled? Where is the sense of waiting and having another family upheaval in a few weeks’ time?”
“I understand why you have made such a success of the law,” said Esme, “but—”
“There are no buts. Come with me, Esme. I’m going to hunt up your mother and mine and talk to them.”
Half an hour later an astonishing whisper went circulating among the guests. Before they could grasp its significance Tom St. Clair and Jen’s husband, broadly smiling, were hustling scattered folk into the parlour again and making clear a passage in the hall. The minister came in with his blue book, and then Selwyn Grant and Esme Graham walked in hand in hand.
When the second ceremony was over, Mr. Grant shook his son’s hand vigorously. “There’s no need to wish you happiness, son; you’ve got it. And you’ve made one fuss and bother do for both weddings, that’s what I call genius. And” — this in a careful whisper, while Esme was temporarily obliterated in Mrs. Grant’s capacious embrace—”she’s got the right sort of a nose. But your mother is a grand woman, son, a grand woman.”
At the Bay Shore Farm
The Newburys were agog with excitement over the Governor’s picnic. As they talked it over on the verandah at sunset, they felt that life could not be worth living to those unfortunate people who had not been invited to it. Not that there were many of the latter in Claymont, for it was the Governor’s native village, and the Claymonters were getting up the picnic for him during his political visit to the city fifteen miles away.
Each of the Newburys had a special reason for wishing to attend the Governor’s picnic. Ralph and Elliott wanted to see the Governor himself. He was a pet hero of theirs. Had he not once been a Claymont lad just like themselves? Had he not risen to the highest office in the state by dint of sheer hard work and persistency? Had he not won a national reputation by his prompt and decisive measures during the big strike at Campden? And was he not a man, personally and politically, whom any boy might be proud to imitate? Yes, to all of these questions. Hence to the Newbury boys the interest of the picnic centred in the Governor.
“I shall feel two inches taller just to get a look at him,” said Ralph enthusiastically.
“He isn’t much to look at,” said Frances, rather patronizingly. “I saw him once at Campden — he came to the school when his daughter was graduated. He is bald and fat. Oh, of course, he is famous and all that! But I want to go to the picnic to see Sara Beaumont. She’s to be there with the Chandlers from Campden, and Mary Spearman, who knows her by sight, is going to point her out to me. I suppose it would be too much to expect to be introduced to her. I shall probably have to content myself with just looking at her.”
Ralph resented hearing the Governor called bald and fat. Somehow it seemed as if his hero were being reduced to the level of common clay.
“That’s like a girl,” he said loftily; “thinking more about a woman who writes books than about a man like the Governor!”
; “I’d rather see Sara Beaumont than forty governors,” retorted Frances. “Why, she’s famous — and her books are perfect! If I could ever hope to write anything like them! It’s been the dream of my life just to see her ever since I read The Story of Idlewild. And now to think that it is to be fulfilled! It seems too good to be true that tomorrow — tomorrow, Newburys, — I shall see Sara Beaumont!”
“Well,” said Cecilia gently — Cecilia was always gentle even in her enthusiasm—”I shall like to see the Governor and Sara Beaumont too. But I’m going to the picnic more for the sake of seeing Nan Harris than anything else. It’s three years since she went away, you know, and I’ve never had another chum whom I love so dearly. I’m just looking forward to meeting her and talking over all our dear, good old times. I do wonder if she has changed much. But I am sure I shall know her.”
“By her red hair and her freckles?” questioned Elliott teasingly. “They’ll be the same as ever, I’ll be bound.”
Cecilia flushed and looked as angry as she could — which isn’t saying much, after all. She didn’t mind when Elliott teased her about her pug nose and her big mouth, but it always hurt her when he made fun of Nan.
Nan’s family had once lived across the street from the Newburys. Nan and Cecilia had been playmates all through childhood, but when both girls were fourteen the Harrises had moved out west. Cecilia had never seen Nan since. But now the latter had come east for a visit, and was with her relatives in Campden. She was to be at the picnic, and Cecilia’s cup of delight brimmed over.
Mrs. Newbury came briskly into the middle of their sunset plans. She had been down to the post office, and she carried an open letter in her hand.
“Mother,” said Frances, straightening up anxiously, “you have a pitying expression on your face. Which of us is it for — speak out — don’t keep us in suspense. Has Mary Spearman told you that Sara Beaumont isn’t going to be at the picnic?”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 645