Somehow, Alan resented Mrs. Danby’s charity. Then, his sense of humour being strongly developed, he smiled to think of this commonplace old lady “making allowances” for the splendid bit of femininity he had seen on the shore. A plump barnyard fowl might as well have talked of making allowances for a seagull!
Alan walked home with Isabel King but he was very silent as they went together down the long, dark, sweet-smelling country road bordered by its white orchards. Isabel put her own construction on his absent replies to her remarks and presently she asked him, “Did you think Lynde Oliver handsome?”
The question gave Alan an annoyance out of all proportion to its significance. He felt an instinctive reluctance to discuss Lynde Oliver with Isabel King.
“I saw her only for a moment,” he said coldly, “but she impressed me as being a beautiful woman.”
“They tell queer stories about her — but maybe they’re not all true,” said Isabel, unable to keep the sneer of malice out of her voice. At that moment Alan’s secret contempt for her crystallized into pronounced aversion. He made no reply and they went the rest of the way in silence. At her gate Isabel said, “You haven’t been over to see us very lately, Mr. Douglas.”
“My congregation is a large one and I cannot visit all my people as often as I might wish,” Alan answered, all the more coldly for the personal note in her tone. “A minister’s time is not his own, you know.”
“Shall you be going to see the Olivers?” asked Isabel bluntly.
“I have not considered that question. Good-night, Miss King.”
On his way back to the manse Alan did consider the question. Should he make any attempt to establish friendly relations with the residents of Four Winds? It surprised him to find how much he wanted to, but he finally concluded that he would not. They were not adherents of his church and he did not believe that even a minister had any right to force himself upon people who plainly wished to be let alone.
When he got home, although it was late, he went to his study and began work on a new text — for Elder Trewin’s seemed utterly out of the question. Even with the new one he did not get on very well. At last in exasperation he leaned back in his chair.
Why can’t I stop thinking of those Four Winds people? Here, let me put these haunting thoughts into words and see if that will lay them. That girl had a beautiful face but a cold one. Would I like to see it lighted up with the warmth of her soul set free? Yes, frankly, I would. She looked upon me with indifference. Would I like to see her welcome me as a friend? I have a conviction that I would, although no doubt everybody in my congregation would look upon her as a most unsuitable friend for me. Do I believe that she is wild, unwomanly, heathenish, as Mrs. Danby says? No, I do not, most emphatically. I believe she is a lady in the truest sense of that much abused word, though she is doubtless unconventional. Having said all this, I do not see what more there is to be said. And — I — am — going — to — write — this — sermon.
Alan wrote it, putting all thought of Lynde Oliver sternly out of his mind for the time being. He had no notion of falling in love with her. He knew nothing of love and imagined that it counted for nothing in his life. He admitted that his curiosity was aflame about the girl, but it never occurred to him that she meant or could mean anything to him but an attractive enigma which once solved would lose its attraction. The young women he knew in Rexton, whose simple, pleasant friendship he valued, had the placid, domestic charm of their own sweet-breathed, windless orchards. Lynde Oliver had the fascination of the lake shore — wild, remote, untamed — the lure of the wilderness and the primitive. There was nothing more personal in his thought of her, and yet when he recalled Isabel King’s sneer he felt an almost personal resentment.
During the following fortnight Alan made many trips to the shore — and he always went by the branch road to the Four Winds point. He did not attempt to conceal from himself that he hoped to meet Lynde Oliver again. In this he was unsuccessful. Sometimes he saw her at a distance along the shore but she always disappeared as soon as seen. Occasionally as he crossed the point he saw her working in her garden but he never went very near the house, feeling that he had no right to spy on it or her in any way. He soon became convinced that she avoided him purposely and the conviction piqued him. He felt an odd masterful desire to meet her face to face and make her look at him. Sometimes he called himself a fool and vowed he would go no more to the Four Winds shore. Yet he inevitably went. He did not find in the shore the comfort and inspiration he had formerly found. Something had come between his soul and the soul of the wilderness — something he did not recognize or formulate — a nameless, haunting longing that shaped itself about the memory of a cold sweet face and starry, indifferent eyes, grey as the lake at dawn.
Of Captain Anthony he never got even a glimpse, but he saw the old cousin several times, going and coming about the yard and its environs. Finally one day he met her, coming up a path which led to a spring down in a firry hollow. She was carrying two heavy pails of water and Alan asked permission to help her.
He half expected a repulse, for the tall, grim old woman had a rather stern and forbidding look, but after gazing at him a moment in a somewhat scrutinizing manner she said briefly, “You may, if you like.”
Alan took the pails and followed her, the path not being wide enough for two. She strode on before him at a rapid, vigorous pace until they came out into the yard by the house. Alan felt his heart beating foolishly. Would he see Lynde Oliver? Would —
“You may carry the water there,” the old woman said, pointing to a little outhouse near the pines. “I’m washing — the spring water is softer than the well water. Thank you” — as Alan set the pails down on a bench—”I’m not so young as I was and bringing the water so far tires me. Lynde always brings it for me when she’s home.”
She stood before him in the narrow doorway, blocking his exit, and looked at him with keen, deep-set dark eyes. In spite of her withered aspect and wrinkled face, she was not an uncomely old woman and there was about her a dignity of carriage and manner that pleased Alan. It did not occur to him to wonder why it should please him. If he had hunted that feeling down he might have been surprised to discover that it had its origin in a curious gratification over the thought that the woman who lived with Lynde had a certain refinement about her. He preferred her unsmiling dourness to vulgar garrulity.
“Are you the young minister up at Rexton?” she asked bluntly.
“Yes.”
“I thought so. Lynde said she had seen you on the shore once. Well” — she cast an uncertain glance over her shoulder at the house—”I’m much obliged to you.”
Alan had an idea that that was not what she had thought of saying, but as she had turned aside and was busying herself with the pails, there seemed nothing for him to do but to go.
“Wait a moment.” She faced him again, and if Alan had been a vain man he might have thought that admiration looked from her piercing eyes. “What do you think of us? I suppose they’ve told you tales of us up there?” — with a scornful gesture of her hand in the direction of Rexton. “Do you believe them?”
“I believe no ill of anyone until I have absolute proof of it,” said Alan, smiling — he was quite unconscious what a winning smile he had, which was the best of it—”and I never put faith in gossip. Of course you are gossipped about — you know that.”
“Yes, I know it” — grimly—”and I don’t care what they say about the Captain and me. We are a queer pair — just as queer as they make us out. You can believe what you like about us, but don’t you believe a word they say against Lynde. She’s sweet and good and beautiful. It’s not her fault that she never went to church — it’s her father’s. Don’t you hold that against her.”
The fierce yet repressed energy of her tone prevented Alan from feeling any amusement over her simple defence of Lynde. Moreover, it sounded unreasonably sweet in his ears.
“I won’t,” he promised, “but I don’t suppos
e it would matter much to Miss Oliver if I did. She did not strike me as a young lady who would worry very much about other people’s opinions.”
If his object were to prolong the conversation about Lynde, he was disappointed, for the old woman had turned abruptly to her work again and, though Alan lingered for a few moments longer, she took no further notice of him. But when he had gone she peered stealthily after him from the door until he was lost to sight among the pines.
“A well-looking man,” she muttered. “I wish Lynde had been home. I didn’t dare ask him to the house for I knew Anthony was in one of his moods. But it’s time something was done. She’s woman grown and this is no life for her. And there’s nobody to do anything but me and I’m not able, even if I knew what to do. I wonder why she hates men so. Perhaps it’s because she never knew any that were real gentlemen. This man is — but then he’s a minister and that makes a wide gulf between them in another way. I’ve seen the love of man and woman bridge some wider gulfs though. But it can’t with Lynde, I’m fearing. She’s so bitter at the mere speaking of love and marriage. I can’t think why. I’m sure her mother and Anthony were happy together, and that was all she’s ever seen of marriage. But I thought when she told me of meeting this young man on the shore there was something in her look I’d never noticed before — as if she’d found something in herself she’d never known was there. But she’ll never make friends with him and I can’t. If the Captain wasn’t so queer—”
She stopped abruptly, for a tall lithe figure was coming up from the shore. Lynde waved her hand as she drew near.
“Oh, Emily, I’ve had such a splendid sail. It was glorious. Bad Emily, you’ve been carrying water. Didn’t I tell you never to do that when I was away?”
“I didn’t have to do it. That young minister up at Rexton met me and brought it up. He’s nice, Lynde.”
Lynde’s brow darkened. She turned and walked away to the house without a word.
On his way home that night Alan met Isabel King on the main shore road. She carried an armful of pine boughs and said she wanted the needles for a cushion. Yet the thought came into Alan’s mind that she was spying on him and, although he tried to dismiss it as unworthy, it continued to lurk there.
For a week he avoided the shore, but there came a day when its inexplicable lure drew him to it again irresistibly. It was a warm, windy evening and the air was sweet and resinous, the lake misty and blue. There was no sign of life about Four Winds and the shore seemed as lonely and virgin as if human foot had never trodden it. The Captain’s yacht was gone from the little harbour where it was generally anchored and, though every flutter of wind in the scrub firs made Alan’s heart beat expectantly, he saw nothing of Lynde Oliver. He was on the point of turning homeward, with an unreasoning sense of disappointment, when one of Lynde’s dogs broke down through the hedge of spruces, barking loudly.
Alan looked for Lynde to follow, but she did not, and he speedily saw that there was something unusual about the dog’s behaviour. The animal circled around him, still barking excitedly, then ran off for a short distance, stopped, barked again, and returned, repeating the manoeuvre. It was plain that he wanted Alan to follow him, and it occurred to the young minister that the dog’s mistress must be in danger of some kind. Instantly he set off after him; and the dog, with a final sharp bark of satisfaction, sprang up the low bank into the spruces.
Alan followed him across the peninsula and then along the further shore, which rapidly grew steep and high. Half a mile down the cliffs were rocky and precipitous, while the beach beneath them was heaped with huge boulders. Alan followed the dog along one of the narrow paths with which the barrens abounded until nearly a mile from Four Winds. Then the animal halted, ran to the edge of the cliff and barked.
It was an ugly-looking place where a portion of the soil had evidently broken away recently, and Alan stepped cautiously out to the brink and looked down. He could not repress an exclamation of dismay and alarm.
A few feet below him Lynde Oliver was lying on a mass of mossy soil which was apparently on the verge of slipping over a sloping shelf of rock, below which was a sheer drop of thirty feet to the cruel boulders below. The extreme danger of her position was manifest at a glance; the soil on which she lay was stationary, yet it seemed as if the slightest motion on her part would send it over the brink.
Lynde lay movelessly; her face was white, and both fear and appeal were visible in her large dilated eyes. Yet she was quite calm and a faint smile crossed her pale lips as she saw the man and the dog.
“Good faithful Pat, so you did bring help,” she said.
“But how can I help you, Miss Oliver?” said Alan hoarsely. “I cannot reach you — and it looks as if the slightest touch or jar would send that broken earth over the brink.”
“I fear it would. You must go back to Four Winds and get a rope.”
“And leave you here alone — in such danger?”
“Pat will stay with me. Besides, there is nothing else to do. You will find a rope in that little house where you put the water for Emily. Father and Emily are away. I think I am quite safe here if I don’t move at all.”
Alan’s own common sense told him that, as she said, there was nothing else to do and, much as he hated to leave her alone thus, he realized that he must lose no time in doing it.
“I’ll be back as quickly as possible,” he said hurriedly.
Alan had been a noted runner at college and his muscles had not forgotten their old training. Yet it seemed to him an age ere he reached Four Winds, secured the rope, and returned. At every flying step he was haunted by the thought of the girl lying on the brink of the precipice and the fear that she might slip over it before he could rescue her. When he reached the scene of the accident he dreaded to look over the broken edge, but she was lying there safely and she smiled when she saw him — a brave smile that softened her tense white face into the likeness of a frightened child’s.
“If I drop the rope down to you, are you strong enough to hold to it while the earth goes and then draw yourself up the slope hand over hand?” asked Alan anxiously.
“Yes,” she answered fearlessly.
Alan passed down one end of the rope and then braced himself firmly to hold it, for there was no tree near enough to be of any assistance. The next moment the full weight of her body swung from it, for at her first movement the soil beneath her slipped away. Alan’s heart sickened; what if she went with it? Could she cling to the rope while he drew her up?
Then he saw she was still safe on the sloping shelf. Carefully and painfully she drew herself to her knees and, dinging to the rope, crept up the rock hand over hand. When she came within his reach he grasped her arms and lifted her up into safety beside him.
“Thank God,” he said, with whiter lips than her own.
For a few moments Lynde sat silent on the sod, exhausted with fright and exertion, while her dog fawned on her in an ecstasy of joy. Finally she looked up into Alan’s anxious face and their eyes met. It was something more than the physical reaction that suddenly flushed the girl’s cheeks. She sprang lithely to her feet.
“Can you walk back home?” Alan asked.
“Oh, yes, I am all right now. It was very foolish of me to get into such a predicament. Father and Emily went down the lake in the yacht this afternoon and I started out for a ramble. When I came here I saw some junebells growing right out on the ledge and I crept out to gather them. I should have known better. It broke away under me and the more I tried to scramble back the faster it slid down, carrying me with it. I thought it would go right over the brink” — she gave a little involuntary shudder—”but just at the very edge it stopped. I knew I must lie very still or it would go right over. It seemed like days. Pat was with me and I told him to go for help, but I knew there was no one at home — and I was horribly afraid,” she concluded with another shiver. “I never was afraid in my life before — at least not with that kind of fear.”
“You have had a ter
rible experience and a narrow escape,” said Alan lamely. He could think of nothing more to say; his usual readiness of utterance seemed to have failed him.
“You saved my life,” she said, “you and Pat — for doggie must have his share of credit.”
“A much larger share than mine,” said Alan, smiling. “If Pat had not come for me, I would not have known of your danger. What a magnificent fellow he is!”
“Isn’t he?” she agreed proudly. “And so is Laddie, my other dog. He went with Father today. I love my dogs more than people.” She looked at him with a little defiance in her eyes. “I suppose you think that terrible.”
“I think many dogs are much more lovable — and worthy of love — than many people,” said Alan, laughing.
How childlike she was in some ways! That trace of defiance — it was so like a child who expected to be scolded for some wrong attitude of mind. And yet there were moments when she looked the tall proud queen. Sometimes, when the path grew narrow, she walked before him, her hand on the dog’s head. Alan liked this, since it left him free to watch admiringly the swinging grace of her step and the white curves of her neck beneath the thick braid of hair, which today was wound about her head. When she dropped back beside him in the wider spaces, he could only have stolen glances at her profile, delicately, strongly cut, virginal in its soft curves, childlike in its purity. Once she looked around and caught his glance; again she flushed, and something strange and exultant stirred in Alan’s heart. It was as if that maiden blush were the involuntary, unconscious admission of some power he had over her — a power which her hitherto unfettered spirit had never before felt. The cold indifference he had seen in her face at their first meeting was gone, and something told him it was gone forever.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 693