It was Lucy Ellen that had first proposed their mutual promise, but Cecily had grasped at it eagerly. The two women, verging on decisive old maidenhood, solemnly promised each other that they would never marry, and would always live together. From that time Cecily’s mind had been at ease. In her eyes a promise was a sacred thing.
The next evening at prayer-meeting Cromwell Biron received quite an ovation from old friends and neighbors. Cromwell had been a favorite in his boyhood. He had now the additional glamour of novelty and reputed wealth.
He was beaming and expansive. He went into the choir to help sing. Lucy Ellen sat beside him, and they sang from the same book. Two red spots burned on her thin cheeks, and she had a cluster of lavender chrysanthemums pinned on her jacket. She looked almost girlish, and Cromwell Biron gazed at her with sidelong admiration, while Cecily watched them both fiercely from her pew. She knew that Cromwell Biron had come home, wooing his old love.
“But he sha’n’t get her,” Cecily whispered into her hymnbook. Somehow it was a comfort to articulate the words, “She promised.”
On the church steps Cromwell offered his arm to Lucy Ellen with a flourish. She took it shyly, and they started down the road in the crisp Autumn moonlight. For the first time in ten years Cecily walked home from prayer-meeting alone. She went up-stairs and flung herself on her bed, reckless for once, of her second best hat and gown.
Lucy Ellen did not venture to ask Cromwell in. She was too much in awe of Cecily for that. But she loitered with him at the gate until the grandfather’s clock in the hall struck eleven. Then Cromwell went away, whistling gaily, with Lucy Ellen’s chrysanthemum in his buttonhole, and Lucy Ellen went in and cried half the night. But Cecily did not cry. She lay savagely awake until morning.
“Cromwell Biron is courting you again,” she said bluntly to Lucy Ellen at the breakfast table.
Lucy Ellen blushed nervously.
“Oh, nonsense, Cecily,” she protested with a simper.
“It isn’t nonsense,” said Cecily calmly. “He is. There is no fool like an old fool, and Cromwell Biron never had much sense. The presumption of him!”
Lucy Ellen’s hands trembled as she put her teacup down.
“He’s not so very old,” she said faintly, “and everybody but you likes him — and he’s well-to-do. I don’t see that there’s any presumption.”
“Maybe not — if you look at it so. You’re very forgiving, Lucy Ellen. You’ve forgotten how he treated you once.”
“No — o — o, I haven’t,” faltered Lucy Ellen.
“Anyway,” said Cecily coldly, “you shouldn’t encourage his attentions, Lucy Ellen; you know you couldn’t marry him even if he asked you. You promised.”
All the fitful color went out of Lucy Ellen’s face. Under Cecily’s pitiless eyes she wilted and drooped.
“I know,” she said deprecatingly, “I haven’t forgotten. You are talking nonsense, Cecily. I like to see Cromwell, and he likes to see me because I’m almost the only one of his old set that is left. He feels lonesome in Oriental now.”
Lucy Ellen lifted her fawn-colored little head more erectly at the last of her protest. She had saved her self-respect.
In the month that followed Cromwell Biron pressed his suit persistently, unintimidated by Cecily’s antagonism. October drifted into November and the chill, drear days came. To Cecily the whole outer world seemed the dismal reflex of her pain-bitten heart. Yet she constantly laughed at herself, too, and her laughter was real if bitter.
One evening she came home late from a neighbor’s. Cromwell Biron passed her in the hollow under the bare boughs of the maple that were outlined against the silvery moonlit sky.
When Cecily went into the house, Lucy Ellen opened the parlor door. She was very pale, but her eyes burned in her face and her hands were clasped before her.
“I wish you’d come in here for a few minutes, Cecily,” she said feverishly.
Cecily followed silently into the room.
“Cecily,” she said faintly, “Cromwell was here to-night. He asked me to marry him. I told him to come to-morrow night for his answer.”
She paused and looked imploringly at Cecily. Cecily did not speak. She stood tall and unrelenting by the table. The rigidity of her face and figure smote Lucy Ellen like a blow. She threw out her bleached little hands and spoke with a sudden passion utterly foreign to her.
“Cecily, I want to marry him. I — I — love him. I always have. I never thought of this when I promised. Oh, Cecily, you’ll let me off my promise, won’t you?”
“No,” said Cecily. It was all she said. Lucy Ellen’s hands fell to her sides, and the light went out of her face.
“You won’t?” she said hopelessly.
Cecily went out. At the door she turned.
“When John Edwards asked me to marry him six years ago, I said no for your sake. To my mind a promise is a promise. But you were always weak and romantic, Lucy Ellen.”
Lucy Ellen made no response. She stood limply on the hearth-rug like a faded blossom bitten by frost.
After Cromwell Biron had gone away the next evening, with all his brisk jauntiness shorn from him for the time, Lucy Ellen went up to Cecily’s room. She stood for a moment in the narrow doorway, with the lamplight striking upward with a gruesome effect on her wan face.
“I’ve sent him away,” she said lifelessly. “I’ve kept my promise, Cecily.”
There was silence for a moment. Cecily did not know what to say. Suddenly Lucy Ellen burst out bitterly.
“I wish I was dead!”
Then she turned swiftly and ran across the hall to her own room. Cecily gave a little moan of pain. This was her reward for all the love she had lavished on Lucy Ellen.
“Anyway, it is all over,” she said, looking dourly into the moonlit boughs of the firs; “Lucy Ellen’ll get over it. When Cromwell is gone she’ll forget all about him. I’m not going to fret. She promised, and she wanted the promise first.”
During the next fortnight tragedy held grim sway in the little weather-gray house among the firs — a tragedy tempered with grim comedy for Cecily, who, amid all her agony, could not help being amused at Lucy Ellen’s romantic way of sorrowing.
Lucy Ellen did her mornings’ work listlessly and drooped through the afternoons. Cecily would have felt it as a relief if Lucy Ellen had upbraided her, but after her outburst on the night she sent Cromwell away, Lucy Ellen never uttered a word of reproach or complaint.
One evening Cecily made a neighborly call in the village. Cromwell Biron happened to be there and gallantly insisted upon seeing her home.
She understood from Cromwell’s unaltered manner that Lucy Ellen had not told him why she had refused him. She felt a sudden admiration for her cousin.
When they reached the house Cromwell halted suddenly in the banner of light that streamed from the sitting-room window. They saw Lucy Ellen sitting alone before the fire, her arms folded on the table, and her head bowed on them. Her white cat sat unnoticed at the table beside her. Cecily gave a gasp of surrender.
“You’d better come in,” she said, harshly. “Lucy Ellen looks lonesome.”
Cromwell muttered sheepishly, “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be company for her. Lucy Ellen doesn’t like me much—”
“Oh, doesn’t she!” said Cecily, bitterly. “She likes you better than she likes me for all I’ve — but it’s no matter. It’s been all my fault — she’ll explain. Tell her I said she could. Come in, I say.”
She caught the still reluctant Cromwell by the arm and fairly dragged him over the geranium beds and through the front door. She opened the sitting-room door and pushed him in. Lucy Ellen rose in amazement. Over Cromwell’s bald head loomed Cecily’s dark face, tragic and determined.
“Here’s your beau, Lucy Ellen,” she said, “and I give you back your promise.”
She shut the door upon the sudden illumination of Lucy Ellen’s face and went up-stairs with the tears rolling down her cheeks.
“It’s my tu
rn to wish I was dead,” she muttered. Then she laughed hysterically.
“That goose of a Cromwell! How queer he did look standing there, frightened to death of Lucy Ellen. Poor little Lucy Ellen! Well, I hope he’ll be good to her.”
The Pursuit of the Ideal
Freda’s snuggery was aglow with the rose-red splendour of an open fire which was triumphantly warding off the stealthy approaches of the dull grey autumn twilight. Roger St. Clair stretched himself out luxuriously in an easy-chair with a sigh of pleasure.
“Freda, your armchairs are the most comfy in the world. How do you get them to fit into a fellow’s kinks so splendidly?”
Freda smiled at him out of big, owlish eyes that were the same tint as the coppery grey sea upon which the north window of the snuggery looked.
“Any armchair will fit a lazy fellow’s kinks,” she said.
“I’m not lazy,” protested Roger. “That you should say so, Freda, when I have wheeled all the way out of town this dismal afternoon over the worst bicycle road in three kingdoms to see you, bonnie maid!”
“I like lazy people,” said Freda softly, tilting her spoon on a cup of chocolate with a slender brown hand.
Roger smiled at her chummily.
“You are such a comfortable girl,” he said. “I like to talk to you and tell you things.”
“You have something to tell me today. It has been fairly sticking out of your eyes ever since you came. Now, ‘fess.”
Freda put away her cup and saucer, got up, and stood by the fireplace, with one arm outstretched along the quaintly carved old mantel. She laid her head down on its curve and looked expectantly at Roger.
“I have seen my ideal, Freda,” said Roger gravely.
Freda lifted her head and then laid it down again. She did not speak. Roger was glad of it. Even at the moment he found himself thinking that Freda had a genius for silence. Any other girl he knew would have broken in at once with surprised exclamations and questions and spoiled his story.
“You have not forgotten what my ideal woman is like?” he said.
Freda shook her head. She was not likely to forget. She remembered only too keenly the afternoon he had told her. They had been sitting in the snuggery, herself in the inglenook, and Roger coiled up in his big pet chair that nobody else ever sat in.
“‘What must my lady be that I must love her?’” he had quoted. “Well, I will paint my dream-love for you, Freda. She must be tall and slender, with chestnut hair of wonderful gloss, with just the suggestion of a ripple in it. She must have an oval face, colourless ivory in hue, with the expression of a Madonna; and her eyes must be ‘passionless, peaceful blue,’ deep and tender as a twilight sky.”
Freda, looking at herself along her arm in the mirror, recalled this description and smiled faintly. She was short and plump, with a piquant, irregular little face, vivid tinting, curly, unmanageable hair of ruddy brown, and big grey eyes. Certainly, she was not his ideal.
“When and where did you meet your lady of the Madonna face and twilight eyes?” she asked.
Roger frowned. Freda’s face was solemn enough but her eyes looked as if she might be laughing at him.
“I haven’t met her yet. I have only seen her. It was in the park yesterday. She was in a carriage with the Mandersons. So beautiful, Freda! Our eyes met as she drove past and I realized that I had found my long-sought ideal. I rushed back to town and hunted up Pete Manderson at the club. Pete is a donkey but he has his ways of being useful. He told me who she was. Her name is Stephanie Gardiner; she is his cousin from the south and is visiting his mother. And, Freda, I am to dine at the Mandersons’ tonight. I shall meet her.”
“Do goddesses and ideals and Madonnas eat?” said Freda in an awed whisper. Her eyes were certainly laughing now. Roger got up stiffly.
“I must confess I did not expect that you would ridicule my confidence, Freda,” he said frigidly. “It is very unlike you. But if you are not interested I will not bore you with any further details. And it is time I was getting back to town anyhow.”
When he had gone Freda ran to the west window and flung it open. She leaned out and waved both hands at him over the spruce hedge.
“Roger, Roger, I was a horrid little beast. Forget it immediately, please. And come out tomorrow and tell me all about her.”
Roger came. He bored Freda terribly with his raptures but she never betrayed it. She was all sympathy — or, at least, as much sympathy as a woman can be who must listen while the man of men sings another woman’s praises to her. She sent Roger away in perfect good humour with himself and all the world, then she curled herself up in the snuggery, pulled a rug over her head, and cried.
Roger came out to Lowlands oftener than ever after that. He had to talk to somebody about Stephanie Gardiner and Freda was the safest vent. The “pursuit of the Ideal,” as she called it, went on with vim and fervour. Sometimes Roger would be on the heights of hope and elation; the next visit he would be in the depths of despair and humility. Freda had learned to tell which it was by the way he opened the snuggery door.
One day when Roger came he found six feet of young man reposing at ease in his particular chair. Freda was sipping chocolate in her corner and looking over the rim of her cup at the intruder just as she had been wont to look at Roger. She had on a new dark red gown and looked vivid and rose-hued.
She introduced the stranger as Mr. Grayson and called him Tim. They seemed to be excellent friends. Roger sat bolt upright on the edge of a fragile, gilded chair which Freda kept to hide a shabby spot in the carpet, and glared at Tim until the latter said goodbye and lounged out.
“You’ll be over tomorrow?” said Freda.
“Can’t I come this evening?” he pleaded.
Freda nodded. “Yes — and we’ll make taffy. You used to make such delicious stuff, Tim.”
“Who is that fellow, Freda?” Roger inquired crossly, as soon as the door closed.
Freda began to make a fresh pot of chocolate. She smiled dreamily as if thinking of something pleasant.
“Why, that was Tim Grayson — dear old Tim. He used to live next door to us when we were children. And we were such chums — always together, making mud pies, and getting into scrapes. He is just the same old Tim, and is home from the west for a long visit. I was so glad to see him again.”
“So it would appear,” said Roger grumpily. “Well, now that ‘dear old Tim’ is gone, I suppose I can have my own chair, can I? And do give me some chocolate. I didn’t know you made taffy.”
“Oh, I don’t. It’s Tim. He can do everything. He used to make it long ago, and I washed up after him and helped him eat it. How is the pursuit of the Ideal coming on, Roger-boy?”
Roger did not feel as if he wanted to talk about the Ideal. He noticed how vivid Freda’s smile was and how lovable were the curves of her neck where the dusky curls were caught up from it. He had also an inner vision of Freda making taffy with Tim and he did not approve of it.
He refused to talk about the Ideal. On his way back to town he found himself thinking that Freda had the most charming, glad little laugh of any girl he knew. He suddenly remembered that he had never heard the Ideal laugh. She smiled placidly — he had raved to Freda about that smile — but she did not laugh. Roger began to wonder what an ideal without any sense of humour would be like when translated into the real.
He went to Lowlands the next afternoon and found Tim there — in his chair again. He detested the fellow but he could not deny that he was good-looking and had charming manners. Freda was very nice to Tim. On his way back to town Roger decided that Tim was in love with Freda. He was furious at the idea. The presumption of the man!
He also remembered that he had not said a word to Freda about the Ideal. And he never did say much more — perhaps because he could not get the chance. Tim was always there before him and generally outstayed him.
One day when he went out he did not find Freda at home. Her aunt told him that she was out riding with Mr. Grayson.
On his way back he met them. As they cantered by, Freda waved her riding whip at him. Her face was full of warm, ripe, kissable tints, her loose lovelocks were blowing about it, and her eyes shone like grey pools mirroring stars. Roger turned and watched them out of sight behind the firs that cupped Lowlands.
That night at Mrs. Crandall’s dinner table somebody began to talk about Freda. Roger strained his ears to listen. Mrs. Kitty Carr was speaking — Mrs. Kitty knew everything and everybody.
“She is simply the most charming girl in the world when you get really acquainted with her,” said Mrs. Kitty, with the air of having discovered and patented Freda. “She is so vivid and unconventional and lovable—’spirit and fire and dew,’ you know. Tim Grayson is a very lucky fellow.”
“Are they engaged?” someone asked.
“Not yet, I fancy. But of course it is only a question of time. Tim simply adores her. He is a good soul and has lots of money, so he’ll do. But really, you know, I think a prince wouldn’t be good enough for Freda.”
Roger suddenly became conscious that the Ideal was asking him a question of which he had not heard a word. He apologized and was forgiven. But he went home a very miserable man.
He did not go to Lowlands for two weeks. They were the longest, most wretched two weeks he had ever lived through. One afternoon he heard that Tim Grayson had gone back west. Mrs. Kitty told it mournfully.
“Of course, this means that Freda has refused him,” she said. “She is such an odd girl.”
Roger went straight out to Lowlands. He found Freda in the snuggery and held out his hands to her.
“Freda, will you marry me? It will take a lifetime to tell you how much I love you.”
“But the Ideal?” questioned Freda.
“I have just discovered what my ideal is,” said Roger. “She is a dear, loyal, companionable little girl, with the jolliest laugh and the warmest, truest heart in the world. She has starry grey eyes, two dimples, and a mouth I must and will kiss — there — there — there! Freda, tell me you love me a little bit, although I’ve been such a besotted idiot.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 655