He looked these facts unflinchingly in the face until he had grown used to them, and then he laid down his course for himself. He loved Sara — and he did not wish to conquer his love, even if it had been possible. It were better to love her, whom he could never win, than to love and be loved by any other woman. His great office in life was to be her friend, humble and unexpectant; to be at hand if she should need him for ever so trifling a service; never to presume, always to be faithful.
Sara had not forgotten her old friend. But their former comradeship was now impossible; they could be friends, but never again companions. Sara’s life was full and gay; she had interests in which he had no share; her social world was utterly apart from his; she was of the hill and its traditions, he was of the valley and its people. The democracy of childhood past, there was no common ground on which they might meet. Only one thing Jeffrey had found it impossible to contemplate calmly. Some day Sara would marry — a man who was her equal, who sat at her father’s table as a guest. In spite of himself, Jeffrey’s heart filled with hot rebellion at the thought; it was like a desecration and a robbery.
But, as the years went by, this thing he dreaded did not happen. Sara did not marry, although gossip assigned her many suitors not unworthy of her. She and Jeffrey were always friends, although they met but seldom. Sometimes she sent him a book; it was his custom to search for the earliest mayflowers and take them to her; once in a long while they met and talked of many things. Jeffrey’s calendar from year to year was red-lettered by these small happenings, of which nobody knew, or, knowing, would have cared.
So he and Sara drifted out of youth, together yet apart. Her mother had died, and Sara was the gracious, stately mistress of Pinehurst, which grew quieter as the time went on; the lovers ceased to come, and holiday friends grew few; with the old colonel’s failing health the gaieties and lavish entertaining ceased. Jeffrey thought that Sara must often be lonely, but she never said so; she remained sweet, serene, calm-eyed, like the child he had met on the hill. Only, now and then, Jeffrey fancied he saw a shadow on her face — a shadow so faint and fleeting that only the eye of an unselfish, abiding love, made clear-sighted by patient years, could have seen it. It hurt him, that shadow; he would have given anything in his power to have banished it.
And now this long friendship was to be broken. Sara was going away. At first he had thought only of her pain, but now his own filled his heart. How could he live without her? How could he dwell in the valley knowing that she had gone from the hill? Never to see her light shine down on him through the northern gap in the pines at night! Never to feel that perhaps her eyes rested on him now and then as he went about his work in the valley fields! Never to stoop with a glad thrill over the first spring flowers because it was his privilege to take them to her! Jeffrey groaned aloud. No, he could not go up to see her that night; he must wait — he must strengthen himself.
Then his heart rebuked him. This was selfishness; this was putting his own feelings before hers — a thing he had sworn never to do. Perhaps she needed him — perhaps she had wondered why he had not come to offer her such poor service as might be in his power. He turned and went down through the orchard lane, taking the old field-path across the valley and up the hill, which he had traversed so often and so joyfully in boyhood. It was dark now, and a few stars were shining in the silvery sky. The wind sighed among the pines as he walked under them. Sometimes he felt that he must turn back — that his pain was going to master him; then he forced himself to go on.
The old grey house where Sara lived seemed bleak and stricken in the dull light, with its leafless vines clinging to it. There were no lights in it. It looked like a home left soulless.
Jeffrey went around to the garden door and knocked. He had expected the maid to open it, put Sara herself came.
“Why, Jeff,” she said, with pleasure in her tones. “I am so glad to see you. I have been wondering why you had not come before.”
“I did not think you would want to see me yet,” he said hurriedly. “I have thought about you every hour — but I feared to intrude.”
“You couldn’t intrude,” she said gently. “Yes, I have wanted to see you, Jeff. Come into the library.”
He followed her into the room where they had always sat in his rare calls. Sara lighted the lamp on the table. As the light shot up she stood clearly revealed in it — a tall, slender woman in a trailing gown of grey. Even a stranger, not knowing her age, would have guessed it to be what it was, yet it would have been hard to say what gave the impression of maturity. Her face was quite unlined — a little pale, perhaps, with more finely cut outlines than those of youth. Her eyes were clear and bright; her abundant brown hair waved back from her face in the same curves that Jeffrey had noted in the purple-gowned child of six, under the pines. Perhaps it was the fine patience and serenity in her face that told her tale of years. Youth can never acquire it.
Her eyes brightened when she saw the mayflowers he carried. She came and took them from him, and her hands touched his, sending a little thrill of joy through him.
“How lovely they are! And the first I have seen this spring. You always bring me the first, don’t you, Jeff? Do you remember the first day we spent picking mayflowers together?”
Jeff smiled. Could he forget? But something held him back from speech.
Sara put the flowers in a vase on the table, but slipped one starry pink cluster into the lace on her breast. She came and sat down beside Jeffrey; he saw that her beautiful eyes had been weeping, and that there were lines of pain around her lips. Some impulse that would not be denied made him lean over and take her hand. She left it unresistingly in his clasp.
“I am very lonely now, Jeff,” she said sadly. “Father has gone. I have no friends left.”
“You have me,” said Jeffrey quietly.
“Yes. I shouldn’t have said that. You are my friend, I know, Jeff. But, but — I must leave Pinehurst, you know.”
“I learned that tonight for the first time,” he answered.
“Did you ever come to a place where everything seemed ended — where it seemed that there was nothing — simply nothing — left, Jeff?” she said wistfully. “But, no, it couldn’t seem so to a man. Only a woman could fully understand what I mean. That is how I feel now. While I had Father to live for it wasn’t so hard. But now there is nothing. And I must go away.”
“Is there anything I can do?” muttered Jeffrey miserably. He knew now that he had made a mistake in coming tonight; he could not help her. His own pain had unmanned him. Presently he would say something foolish or selfish in spite of himself.
Sara turned her eyes on him.
“There is nothing anybody can do, Jeff,” she said piteously. Her eyes, those clear child-eyes, filled with tears. “I shall be braver — stronger — after a while. But just now I have no strength left. I feel like a lost, helpless child. Oh, Jeff!”
She put her slender hands over her face and sobbed. Every sob cut Jeffrey to the heart.
“Don’t — don’t, Sara,” he said huskily. “I can’t bear to see you suffer so. I’d die for you if it would do you any good. I love you — I love you! I never meant to tell you so, but it is the truth. I oughtn’t to tell you now. Don’t think that I’m trying to take any advantage of your loneliness and sorrow. I know — I have always known — that you are far above me. But that couldn’t prevent my loving you — just humbly loving you, asking nothing else. You may be angry with my presumption, but I can’t help telling you that I love you. That’s all. I just want you to know it.”
Sara had turned away her head. Jeffrey was overcome with contrition. Ah, he had no business to speak so — he had spoiled the devotion of years. Who was he that he should have dared to love her? Silence alone had justified his love, and now he had lost that justification. She would despise him. He had forfeited her friendship for ever.
“Are you angry, Sara?” he questioned sadly, after a silence.
“I think I am,” said Sa
ra. She kept her stately head averted. “If — if you have loved me, Jeff, why did you never tell me so before?”
“How could I dare?” he said gravely. “I knew I could never win you — that I had no right to dream of you so. Oh, Sara, don’t be angry! My love has been reverent and humble. I have asked nothing. I ask nothing now but your friendship. Don’t take that from me, Sara. Don’t be angry with me.”
“I am angry,” repeated Sara, “and I think I have a right to be.”
“Perhaps so,” he said simply, “but not because I have loved you. Such love as mine ought to anger no woman, Sara. But you have a right to be angry with me for presuming to put it into words. I should not have done so — but I could not help it. It rushed to my lips in spite of me. Forgive me.”
“I don’t know whether I can forgive you for not telling me before,” said Sara steadily. “That is what I have to forgive — not your speaking at last, even if it was dragged from you against your will. Did you think I would make you such a very poor wife, Jeff, that you would not ask me to marry you?”
“Sara!” he said, aghast. “I — I — you were as far above me as a star in the sky — I never dreamed — I never hoped — —”
“That I could care for you?” said Sara, looking round at last. “Then you were more modest than a man ought to be, Jeff. I did not know that you loved me, or I should have found some way to make you speak out long ago. I should not have let you waste all these years. I’ve loved you — ever since we picked mayflowers on the hill, I think — ever since I came home from school, I know. I never cared for anyone else — although I tried to, when I thought you didn’t care for me. It mattered nothing to me that the world may have thought there was some social difference between us. There, Jeff, you cannot accuse me of not making my meaning plain.”
“Sara,” he whispered, wondering, bewildered, half-afraid to believe this unbelievable joy. “I’m not half worthy of you — but — but” — he bent forward and put his arm around her, looking straight into her clear, unshrinking eyes. “Sara, will you be my wife?”
“Yes.” She said the word clearly and truly. “And I will think myself a proud and happy and honoured woman to be so, Jeff. Oh, I don’t shrink from telling you the truth, you see. You mean too much to me for me to dissemble it. I’ve hidden it for eighteen years because I didn’t think you wanted to hear it, but I’ll give myself the delight of saying it frankly now.”
She lifted her delicate, high-bred face, fearless love shining in every lineament, to his, and they exchanged their first kiss.
Clorinda’s Gifts
“It is a dreadful thing to be poor a fortnight before Christmas,” said Clorinda, with the mournful sigh of seventeen years.
Aunt Emmy smiled. Aunt Emmy was sixty, and spent the hours she didn’t spend in a bed, on a sofa or in a wheel chair; but Aunt Emmy was never heard to sigh.
“I suppose it is worse then than at any other time,” she admitted.
That was one of the nice things about Aunt Emmy. She always sympathized and understood.
“I’m worse than poor this Christmas ... I’m stony broke,” said Clorinda dolefully. “My spell of fever in the summer and the consequent doctor’s bills have cleaned out my coffers completely. Not a single Christmas present can I give. And I did so want to give some little thing to each of my dearest people. But I simply can’t afford it ... that’s the hateful, ugly truth.”
Clorinda sighed again.
“The gifts which money can purchase are not the only ones we can give,” said Aunt Emmy gently, “nor the best, either.”
“Oh, I know it’s nicer to give something of your own work,” agreed Clorinda, “but materials for fancy work cost too. That kind of gift is just as much out of the question for me as any other.”
“That was not what I meant,” said Aunt Emmy.
“What did you mean, then?” asked Clorinda, looking puzzled.
Aunt Emmy smiled.
“Suppose you think out my meaning for yourself,” she said. “That would be better than if I explained it. Besides, I don’t think I could explain it. Take the beautiful line of a beautiful poem to help you in your thinking out: ‘The gift without the giver is bare.’”
“I’d put it the other way and say, ‘The giver without the gift is bare,’” said Clorinda, with a grimace. “That is my predicament exactly. Well, I hope by next Christmas I’ll not be quite bankrupt. I’m going into Mr. Callender’s store down at Murraybridge in February. He has offered me the place, you know.”
“Won’t your aunt miss you terribly?” said Aunt Emmy gravely.
Clorinda flushed. There was a note in Aunt Emmy’s voice that disturbed her.
“Oh, yes, I suppose she will,” she answered hurriedly. “But she’ll get used to it very soon. And I will be home every Saturday night, you know. I’m dreadfully tired of being poor, Aunt Emmy, and now that I have a chance to earn something for myself I mean to take it. I can help Aunt Mary, too. I’m to get four dollars a week.”
“I think she would rather have your companionship than a part of your salary, Clorinda,” said Aunt Emmy. “But of course you must decide for yourself, dear. It is hard to be poor. I know it. I am poor.”
“You poor!” said Clorinda, kissing her. “Why, you are the richest woman I know, Aunt Emmy — rich in love and goodness and contentment.”
“And so are you, dearie ... rich in youth and health and happiness and ambition. Aren’t they all worth while?”
“Of course they are,” laughed Clorinda. “Only, unfortunately, Christmas gifts can’t be coined out of them.”
“Did you ever try?” asked Aunt Emmy. “Think out that question, too, in your thinking out, Clorinda.”
“Well, I must say bye-bye and run home. I feel cheered up — you always cheer people up, Aunt Emmy. How grey it is outdoors. I do hope we’ll have snow soon. Wouldn’t it be jolly to have a white Christmas? We always have such faded brown Decembers.”
Clorinda lived just across the road from Aunt Emmy in a tiny white house behind some huge willows. But Aunt Mary lived there too — the only relative Clorinda had, for Aunt Emmy wasn’t really her aunt at all. Clorinda had always lived with Aunt Mary ever since she could remember.
Clorinda went home and upstairs to her little room under the eaves, where the great bare willow boughs were branching athwart her windows. She was thinking over what Aunt Emmy had said about Christmas gifts and giving.
“I’m sure I don’t know what she could have meant,” pondered Clorinda. “I do wish I could find out if it would help me any. I’d love to remember a few of my friends at least. There’s Miss Mitchell ... she’s been so good to me all this year and helped me so much with my studies. And there’s Mrs. Martin out in Manitoba. If I could only send her something! She must be so lonely out there. And Aunt Emmy herself, of course; and poor old Aunt Kitty down the lane; and Aunt Mary and, yes — Florence too, although she did treat me so meanly. I shall never feel the same to her again. But she gave me a present last Christmas, and so out of mere politeness I ought to give her something.”
Clorinda stopped short suddenly. She had just remembered that she would not have liked to say that last sentence to Aunt Emmy. Therefore, there was something wrong about it. Clorinda had long ago learned that there was sure to be something wrong in anything that could not be said to Aunt Emmy. So she stopped to think it over.
Clorinda puzzled over Aunt Emmy’s meaning for four days and part of three nights. Then all at once it came to her. Or if it wasn’t Aunt Emmy’s meaning it was a very good meaning in itself, and it grew clearer and expanded in meaning during the days that followed, although at first Clorinda shrank a little from some of the conclusions to which it led her.
“I’ve solved the problem of my Christmas giving for this year,” she told Aunt Emmy. “I have some things to give after all. Some of them quite costly, too; that is, they will cost me something, but I know I’ll be better off and richer after I’ve paid the price. That is what
Mr. Grierson would call a paradox, isn’t it? I’ll explain all about it to you on Christmas Day.”
On Christmas Day, Clorinda went over to Aunt Emmy’s. It was a faded brown Christmas after all, for the snow had not come. But Clorinda did not mind; there was such joy in her heart that she thought it the most delightful Christmas Day that ever dawned.
She put the queer cornery armful she carried down on the kitchen floor before she went into the sitting room. Aunt Emmy was lying on the sofa before the fire, and Clorinda sat down beside her.
“I’ve come to tell you all about it,” she said.
Aunt Emmy patted the hand that was in her own.
“From your face, dear girl, it will be pleasant hearing and telling,” she said.
Clorinda nodded.
“Aunt Emmy, I thought for days over your meaning ... thought until I was dizzy. And then one evening it just came to me, without any thinking at all, and I knew that I could give some gifts after all. I thought of something new every day for a week. At first I didn’t think I could give some of them, and then I thought how selfish I was. I would have been willing to pay any amount of money for gifts if I had had it, but I wasn’t willing to pay what I had. I got over that, though, Aunt Emmy. Now I’m going to tell you what I did give.
“First, there was my teacher, Miss Mitchell. I gave her one of father’s books. I have so many of his, you know, so that I wouldn’t miss one; but still it was one I loved very much, and so I felt that that love made it worth while. That is, I felt that on second thought. At first, Aunt Emmy, I thought I would be ashamed to offer Miss Mitchell a shabby old book, worn with much reading and all marked over with father’s notes and pencillings. I was afraid she would think it queer of me to give her such a present. And yet somehow it seemed to me that it was better than something brand new and unmellowed — that old book which father had loved and which I loved. So I gave it to her, and she understood. I think it pleased her so much, the real meaning in it. She said it was like being given something out of another’s heart and life.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 663