“If she has James Sheldon’s round face and big blue eyes and curly yellow hair I shall never really like her, no matter how Ingelowish she may be inside,” said Ellen decidedly.
When Worth Sheldon came, each of her aunts drew a long breath of relief. Worth was not in the least like her father in appearance. Neither did she resemble her mother, who had been a sprightly, black-haired and black-eyed girl. Worth was tall and straight, with a long braid of thick, wavy brown hair, large, level-gazing grey eyes, a square jaw, and an excellent chin with a dimple in it.
“She is the very image of Mother’s sister, Aunt Alice, who died so long ago,” said Charlotte. “You don’t remember her, Ellen, but I do very well. She was the sweetest woman that ever drew breath. She was Paul’s favourite aunt, too,” Charlotte added with a sigh. Paul’s antagonistic attitude was the only drawback to the joy of this meeting. How delightful it would have been if he had not refused to be there too, to welcome Elizabeth’s child.
Worth came to hearts prepared to love her, but they must have loved her in any case. In a day Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Ellen and shy, quiet Uncle George had yielded wholly to her charm. She was girlishly bright and merry, frankly delighted with the old homestead and the quaint, old-fashioned, daintily kept rooms. Yet there was no suggestion of gush about her; she did not go into raptures, but her pleasure shone out in eyes and tones. There was so much to tell and ask and remember the first day that it was not until the second morning after her arrival that Worth asked the question her aunts had been dreading. She asked it out in the orchard, in the emerald gloom of a long arcade of stout old trees that Grandfather Ingelow had planted fifty years ago.
“Aunt Charlotte, when is Uncle Paul coming up to see me? I long to see him; Mother has talked so much to me about him. She was his favourite sister, wasn’t she?”
Charlotte and Ellen looked at each other. Ellen nodded slyly. It would be better to tell Worth the whole truth at once. She would certainly find it out soon.
“I do not think, my dear,” said Aunt Charlotte quietly, “that your Uncle Paul will be up to see you at all.”
“Why not?” asked Worth, her serious grey eyes looking straight into Aunt Charlotte’s troubled dark ones. Aunt Charlotte understood that Elizabeth had never told Worth anything about her family’s resentment of her marriage. It was not a pleasant thing to have to explain it all to Elizabeth’s child, but it must be done.
“I think, my dear,” she said gently, “that I will have to tell you a little bit of our family history that may not be very pleasant to hear or tell. Perhaps you don’t know that when your mother married we — we — did not exactly approve of her marriage. Perhaps we were mistaken; at any rate it was wrong and foolish to let it come between us and her as we have done. But that is how it was. None of us approved, as I have said, but none of us was so bitter as your Uncle Paul. Your mother was his favourite sister, and he was very deeply attached to her. She was only a year younger than he. When he bought the Greenwood farm she went and kept house for him for three years before her marriage. When she married, Paul was terribly angry. He was always a strange man, very determined and unyielding. He said he would never forgive her, and he never has. He has never married, and he has lived so long alone at Greenwood with only deaf old Mrs. Bree to keep house for him that he has grown odder than ever. One of us wanted to go and keep house for him, but he would not let us. And — I must tell you this although I hate to — he was very angry when he heard we had invited you to visit us, and he said he would not come near the Grange as long as you were here. Oh, you can’t realize how bitter and obstinate he is. We pleaded with him, but I think that only made him worse. We have felt so bad over it, your Aunt Ellen and your Uncle George and I, but we can do nothing at all.”
Worth had listened gravely. The story was all new to her, but she had long thought there must be a something at the root of her mother’s indifferent relations with her old home and friends. When Aunt Charlotte, flushed and half-tearful, finished speaking, a little glimmer of fun came into Worth’s grey eyes, and her dimple was very pronounced as she said,
“Then, if Uncle Paul will not come to see me, I must go to see him.”
“My dear!” cried both her aunts together in dismay. Aunt Ellen got her breath first.
“Oh, my dear child, you must not think of such a thing,” she cried nervously. “It would never do. He would — I don’t know what he would do — order you off the premises, or say something dreadful. No! No! Wait. Perhaps he will come after all — we will see. You must have patience.”
Worth shook her head and the smile in her eyes deepened.
“I don’t think he will come,” she said. “Mother has told me something about the Ingelow stubbornness. She says I have it in full measure, but I like to call it determination, it sounds so much better. No, the mountain will not come to Mohammed, so Mohammed will go to the mountain. I think I will walk down to Greenwood this afternoon. There, dear aunties, don’t look so troubled. Uncle Paul won’t run at me with a pitchfork, will he? He can’t do worse than order me off his premises, as you say.”
Aunt Charlotte shook her head. She understood that no argument would turn the girl from her purpose if she had the Ingelow will, so she said nothing more. In the afternoon Worth set out for Greenwood, a mile away.
“Oh, what will Paul say?” exclaimed the aunts, with dismal forebodings.
Worth met her Uncle Paul at the garden gate. He was standing there when she came up the slope of the long lane, a tall, massive figure of a man, with deep-set black eyes, a long, prematurely white beard, and a hooked nose. Handsome and stubborn enough Paul Ingelow looked. It was not without reason that his neighbours called him the oddest Ingelow of them all.
Behind him was a fine old farmhouse in beautiful grounds. Worth felt almost as much interested in Greenwood as in the Grange. It had been her mother’s home for three years, and Elizabeth Ingelow had loved it and talked much to her daughter of it.
Paul Ingelow did not move or speak, although he probably guessed who his visitor was. Worth held out her hand. “How do you do, Uncle Paul?” she said.
Paul ignored the outstretched hand. “Who are you?” he asked gruffly.
“I am Worth Sheldon, your sister Elizabeth’s daughter,” she answered. “Won’t you shake hands with me, Uncle Paul?”
“I have no sister Elizabeth,” he answered unbendingly.
Worth folded her hands on the gatepost and met his frowning gaze unshrinkingly. “Oh, yes, you have,” she said calmly. “You can’t do away with natural ties by simply ignoring them, Uncle Paul. They go on existing. I never knew until this morning that you were at enmity with my mother. She never told me. But she has talked a great deal of you to me. She has told me often how much you and she loved each other and how good you always were to her. She sent her love to you.”
“Years ago I had a sister Elizabeth,” said Paul Ingelow harshly. “I loved her very tenderly, but she married against my will a shiftless scamp who—”
Worth lifted her hand slightly. “He was my father, Uncle Paul, and he was always kind to me; whatever his faults may have been I cannot listen to a word against him.”
“You shouldn’t have come here, then,” he said, but he said it less harshly. There was even a certain reluctant approval of this composed, independent niece in his eyes. “Didn’t they tell you at the Grange that I didn’t want to see you?”
“Yes, they told me this morning, but I wanted to see you, so I came. Why cannot we be friends, Uncle Paul, not because we are uncle and niece, but simply because you are you and I am I? Let us leave my father and mother out of the question and start fair on our own account.”
For a moment Uncle Paul looked at her. She met his gaze frankly and firmly, with a merry smile lurking in her eyes. Then he threw back his head and laughed a hearty laugh that was good to hear. “Very well,” he said. “It is a bargain.”
He put his hand over the gate and shook hers. Then he opened the gate
and invited her into the house. Worth stayed to tea, and Uncle Paul showed her all over Greenwood.
“You are to come here as often as you like,” he told her. “When a young lady and I make a compact of friendship I am going to live up to it. But you are not to talk to me about your mother. Remember, we are friends because I am I and you are you, and there is no question of anybody else.”
The Grange Ingelows were amazed to see Paul bringing Worth home in his buggy that evening. When Worth had gone into the house Charlotte told him that she was glad to see that he had relented towards Elizabeth’s child.
“I have not,” he made stern answer. “I don’t know whom you mean by Elizabeth’s child. That young woman and I have taken a liking for each other which we mean to cultivate on our own account. Don’t call her Elizabeth’s child to me again.”
As the days and weeks went by Worth grew dearer and dearer to the Grange folk. The aunts often wondered to themselves how they had existed before Worth came and, oftener yet, how they could do without her when the time came for her to go home. Meanwhile, the odd friendship between her and Uncle Paul deepened and grew. They read and drove and walked together. Worth spent half her time at Greenwood. Once Uncle Paul said to her, as if speaking half to himself,
“To think that James Sheldon could have a daughter like you!”
Up went Worth’s head. Worth’s grey eyes flashed. “I thought we were not to speak of my parents?” she said. “You ought not to have been the first to break the compact, Uncle Paul.”
“I accept the rebuke and beg your pardon,” he said. He liked her all the better for those little flashes of spirit across her girlish composure.
One day in September they were together in the garden at Greenwood. Worth, looking lovingly and regretfully down the sun-flecked avenue of box, said with a sigh, “Next month I must go home. How sorry I shall be to leave the Grange and Greenwood. I have had such a delightful summer, and I have learned to love all the old nooks and corners as well as if I had lived here all my life.”
“Stay here!” said Uncle Paul abruptly. “Stay here with me. I want you, Worth. Let Greenwood be your home henceforth and adopt your crusty old bachelor uncle for a father.”
“Oh, Uncle Paul,” cried Worth, “I don’t know — I don’t think — oh, you surprise me!”
“I surprise myself, perhaps. But I mean it, Worth. I am a rich, lonely old man and I want to keep this new interest you have brought into my life. Stay with me. I will try to give you a very happy life, my child, and all I have shall be yours.”
Seeing her troubled face, he added, “There, I don’t ask you to decide right here. I suppose you have other claims to adjust. Take time to think it over.”
“Thank you,” said Worth. She went back to the Grange as one in a dream and shut herself up in the white southeast room to think. She knew that she wanted to accept this unexpected offer of Uncle Paul’s. Worth’s loyal tongue had never betrayed, even to the loving aunts, any discontent in the prairie farm life that had always been hers. But it had been a hard life for the girl, narrow and poverty-bounded. She longed to put forth her hand and take this other life which opened so temptingly before her. She knew, too, that her mother, ambitious for her child, would not be likely to interpose any objections. She had only to go to Uncle Paul and all that she longed for would be given her, together with the faithful, protecting fatherly love and care that in all its strength and sweetness had never been hers.
She must decide for herself. Not even of Aunt Charlotte or Aunt Ellen could she ask advice. She knew they would entreat her to accept, and she needed no such incentive to her own wishes. Far on into the night Worth sat at the white-curtained dormer window, looking at the stars over the apple trees, and fighting her battle between inclination and duty. It was a hard and stubbornly contested battle, but with that square chin and those unfaltering grey eyes it could end in only one way. Next day Worth went down to Greenwood.
“Well, what is it to be?” said Uncle Paul without preface, as he met her in the garden.
“I cannot come, Uncle Paul,” said Worth steadily. “I cannot give up my mother.”
“I don’t ask you to give her up,” he said gruffly. “You can write to her and visit her. I don’t want to come between parent and child.”
“That isn’t the point exactly, Uncle Paul. I hope you will not be angry with me for not accepting your offer. I wanted to — you don’t know how much I wanted to — but I cannot. Mother and I are so much to each other, Uncle Paul, more, I am sure, than even most mothers and daughters. You have never let me speak of her, but I must tell you this. Mother has often told me that when I came to her things were going very hard with her and that I was heaven’s own gift to comfort and encourage her. Then, in the ten years that followed, the three other babies that came to her all died before they were two years old. And with each loss Mother said I grew dearer to her. Don’t you see, Uncle Paul, I’m not merely just one child to her but I’m all those children? Six years ago the twins were born, and they are dear, bright little lads, but they are very small yet, so Mother has really nobody but me. I know she would consent to let me stay here, because she would think it best for me, but it wouldn’t be really best for me; it couldn’t be best for a girl to do what wasn’t right. I love you, Uncle Paul, and I love Greenwood, and I want to stay so much, but I cannot. I have thought it all over and I must go back to Mother.”
Uncle Paul did not say one word. He turned his back on Worth and walked the full length of the box alley twice. Worth watched him wistfully. Was he very angry? Would he forgive her?
“You are an Ingelow, Worth,” he said when he came back. That was all, but Worth understood that her decision was not to cause any estrangement between them.
A month later Worth’s last day at the Grange came. She was to leave for the West the next morning. They were all out in Grandfather Ingelow’s arcade, Uncle George and Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Ellen and Worth, enjoying the ripe mellow sunshine of the October day, when Paul Ingelow came up the slope. Worth went to meet him with outstretched hands. He took them both in his and looked at her very gravely.
“I have not come to say goodbye, Worth. I will not say it. You are coming back to me.”
Worth shook her brown head sadly. “Oh, I cannot, Uncle Paul. You know — I told you—”
“Yes, I know,” he interrupted. “I have been thinking it all over every day since. You know yourself what the Ingelow determination is. It’s a good thing in a good cause but a bad thing in a bad one. And it is no easy thing to conquer when you’ve let it rule you for years as I have done. But I have conquered it, or you have conquered it for me. Child, here is a letter. It is to your mother — my sister Elizabeth. In it I have asked her to forgive me, and to forget our long estrangement. I have asked her to come back to me with you and her boys. I want you all — all — at Greenwood and I will do the best I can for you all.”
“Oh, Uncle Paul,” cried Worth, her face aglow and quivering with smiles and tears and sunshine.
“Do you think she will forgive me and come?”
“I know she will,” cried Worth. “I know how she has longed for you and home. Oh, I am so happy, Uncle Paul!”
He smiled at her and put his arm over her shoulder. Together they walked up the golden arcade to tell the others. That night Charlotte and Ellen cried with happiness as they talked it over in the twilight.
“How beautiful!” murmured Charlotte softly. “We shall not lose Worth after all. Ellen, I could not have borne it to see that girl go utterly out of our lives again.”
“I always hoped and believed that Elizabeth’s child would somehow bring us all together again,” said Ellen happily.
Freda’s Adopted Grave
North Point, where Freda lived, was the bleakest settlement in the world. Even its inhabitants, who loved it, had to admit that. The northeast winds swept whistling up the bay and blew rawly over the long hill that sloped down to it, blighting everything that was in their
way. Only the sturdy firs and spruces could hold their own against it. So there were no orchards or groves or flower gardens in North Point.
Just over the hill, in a sheltered southwest valley, was the North Point church with the graveyard behind it, and this graveyard was the most beautiful spot in North Point or near it. The North Point folk loved flowers. They could not have them about their homes, so they had them in their graveyard. It was a matter of pride with each family to keep the separate plot neatly trimmed and weeded and adorned with beautiful blossoms.
It was one of the unwritten laws of the little community that on some selected day in May everybody would repair to the graveyard to plant, trim and clip. It was not an unpleasant duty, even to those whose sorrow was fresh. It seemed as if they were still doing something for the friends who had gone when they made their earthly resting places beautiful.
As for the children, they looked forward to “Graveyard Day” as a very delightful anniversary, and it divided its spring honours with the amount of the herring catch.
“Tomorrow is Graveyard Day,” said Minnie Hutchinson at school recess, when all the little girls were sitting on the fence. “Ain’t I glad! I’ve got the loveliest big white rosebush to plant by Grandma Hutchinson’s grave. Uncle Robert sent it out from town.”
“My mother has ten tuberoses to set out,” said Nan Gray proudly.
“We’re going to plant a row of lilies right around our plot,” said Katie Morris.
Every little girl had some boast to make, that is, every little girl but Freda. Freda sat in a corner all by herself and felt miserably outside of everything. She had no part or lot in Graveyard Day.
“Are you going to plant anything, Freda?” asked Nan, with a wink at the others.
Freda shook her head mutely.
“Freda can’t plant anything,” said Winnie Bell cruelly, although she did not mean to be cruel. “She hasn’t got a grave.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 647