The Complete Works of L M Montgomery

by L. M. Montgomery

  “Philippa Blair, can you believe it’s yourself?” I said mentally. “Here you are, lying on a brush bed on a western prairie in the middle of the night, at least twenty miles from any human being except another frail creature of your own sex. Yet you’re not even frightened. You are very comfy and composed, and you’re going right to sleep again.”

  And right to sleep again I went.

  Our fifth day began ominously. We had made an early start and had driven about six miles when the calamity occurred. Kate turned a corner too sharply, to avoid a big boulder; there was a heart-breaking sound.

  “The tongue of the wagon is broken,” cried Kate in dismay. All too surely it was. We looked at each other blankly.

  “What can we do?” I said.

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Kate helplessly. When Kate felt helpless I thought things must be desperate indeed. We got out and investigated the damage.

  “It’s not a clean break,” said Kate. “It’s a long, slanting break. If we had a piece of rope I believe I could fix it.”

  “Mr. Lonsdale’s piece of rope!” I cried.

  “The very thing,” said Kate, brightening up.

  The rope was found and we set to work. With the aid of some willow withes and that providential rope we contrived to splice the tongue together in some shape.

  Although the trail was good we made only twelve miles the rest of the day, so slowly did we have to drive. Besides, we were continually expecting that tongue to give way again, and the strain was bad for our nerves. When we came at sunset to the junction of the Black River trail with ours, Kate resolutely turned the shaganappies down it.

  “We’ll go and spend the night with the Brewsters,” she said. “They live only ten miles down this trail. I went to school in Regina with Hannah Brewster, and though I haven’t seen her for ten years I know she’ll be glad to see us. She’s a lovely person, and her husband is a very nice man. I visited them once after they were married.”

  We soon arrived at the Brewster place. It was a trim, white-washed little log house in a grove of poplars. But all the blinds were down and we discovered the door was locked. Evidently the Brewsters were not at home.

  “Never mind,” said Kate cheerfully, “we’ll light a fire outside and cook our supper and then we’ll spend the night in the barn. A bed of prairie hay will be just the thing.”

  But the barn was locked too. It was now dark and our plight was rather desperate.

  “I’m going to get into the house if I have to break a window,” said Kate resolutely. “Hannah would want us to do that. She’d never get over it, if she heard we came to her house and couldn’t get in.”

  Fortunately we did not have to go to the length of breaking into Hannah’s house. The kitchen window went up quite easily. We turned the shaganappies loose to forage for themselves, grass and water being abundant. Then we climbed in at the window, lighted our lantern, and found ourselves in a very snug little kitchen. Opening off it on one side was a trim, nicely furnished parlour and on the other a well-stocked pantry.

  “We’ll light the fire in the stove in a jiffy and have a real good supper,” said Kate exultantly. “Here’s cold roast beef — and preserves and cookies and cheese and butter.”

  Before long we had supper ready and we did full justice to the absent Hannah’s excellent cheer. After all, it was quite nice to sit down once more to a well-appointed table and eat in civilized fashion.

  Then we washed up all the dishes and made everything snug and tidy. I shall never be sufficiently thankful that we did so.

  Kate piloted me upstairs to the spare room.

  “This is fixed up much nicer than it was when I was here before,” she said, looking around. “Of course, Hannah and Ted were just starting out then and they had to be economical. They must have prospered, to be able to afford such furniture as this. Well, turn in, Phil. Won’t it be rather jolly to sleep between sheets once more?”

  We slept long and soundly until half-past eight the next morning; and dear knows if we would have wakened then of our own accord. But I heard somebody saying in a very harsh, gruff voice, “Here, you two, wake up! I want to know what this means.”

  We two did wake up, promptly and effectually. I never wakened up so thoroughly in my life before. Standing in our room were three people, one of them a man. He was a big, grey-haired man with a bushy black beard and an angry scowl. Beside him was a woman — a tall, thin, angular personage with red hair and an indescribable bonnet. She looked even crosser and more amazed than the man, if that were possible. In the background was another woman — a tiny old lady who must have been at least eighty. She was, in spite of her tininess, a very striking-looking personage; she was dressed all in black, and had snow-white hair, a dead-white face, and snapping, vivid, coal-black eyes. She looked as amazed as the other two, but she didn’t look cross.

  I knew something must be wrong — fearfully wrong — but I didn’t know what. Even in my confusion, I found time to think that if that disagreeable-looking red-haired woman was Hannah Brewster, Kate must have had a queer taste in school friends. Then the man said, more gruffly than ever, “Come now. Who are you and what business have you here?”

  Kate raised herself on one elbow. She looked very wild. I heard the old black-and-white lady in the background chuckle to herself.

  “Isn’t this Theodore Brewster’s place?” gasped Kate.

  “No,” said the big woman, speaking for the first time. “This place belongs to us. We bought it from the Brewsters in the spring. They moved over to Black River Forks. Our name is Chapman.”

  Poor Kate fell back on the pillow, quite overcome. “I — I beg your pardon,” she said. “I — I thought the Brewsters lived here. Mrs. Brewster is a friend of mine. My cousin and I are on our way to Bothwell and we called here to spend the night with Hannah. When we found everyone away we just came in and made ourselves at home.”

  “A likely story,” said the red woman.

  “We weren’t born yesterday,” said the man.

  Madam Black-and-White didn’t say anything, but when the other two had made their pretty speeches she doubled up in a silent convulsion of mirth, shaking her head from side to side and beating the air with her hands.

  If they had been nice to us, Kate would probably have gone on feeling confused and ashamed. But when they were so disagreeable she quickly regained her self-possession. She sat up again and said in her haughtiest voice, “I do not know when you were born, or where, but it must have been somewhere where very peculiar manners were taught. If you will have the decency to leave our room — this room — until we can get up and dress we will not transgress upon your hospitality” (Kate put a most satirical emphasis on that word) “any longer. And we shall pay you amply for the food we have eaten and the night’s lodging we have taken.”

  The black-and-white apparition went through the motion of clapping her hands, but not a sound did she make. Whether he was cowed by Kate’s tone, or appeased by the prospect of payment, I know not, but Mr. Chapman spoke more civilly. “Well, that’s fair. If you pay up it’s all right.”

  “They shall do no such thing as pay you,” said Madam Black-and-White in a surprisingly clear, resolute, authoritative voice. “If you haven’t any shame for yourself, Robert Chapman, you’ve got a mother-in-law who can be ashamed for you. No strangers shall be charged for food or lodging in any house where Mrs. Matilda Pitman lives. Remember that I’ve come down in the world, but I haven’t forgot all decency for all that. I knew you was a skinflint when Amelia married you and you’ve made her as bad as yourself. But I’m boss here yet. Here, you, Robert Chapman, take yourself out of here and let those girls get dressed. And you, Amelia, go downstairs and cook a breakfast for them.”

  I never, in all my life, saw anything like the abject meekness with which those two big people obeyed that mite. They went, and stood not upon the order of their going. As the door closed behind them, Mrs. Matilda Pitman laughed silently, and rocked from side
to side in her merriment.

  “Ain’t it funny?” she said. “I mostly lets them run the length of their tether but sometimes I has to pull them up, and then I does it with a jerk. Now, you can take your time about dressing, my dears, and I’ll go down and keep them in order, the mean scalawags.”

  When we descended the stairs we found a smoking-hot breakfast on the table. Mr. Chapman was nowhere to be seen, and Mrs. Chapman was cutting bread with a sulky air. Mrs. Matilda Pitman was sitting in an armchair, knitting. She still wore her bonnet and her triumphant expression. “Set right in, dears, and make a good breakfast,” she said.

  “We are not hungry,” said Kate, almost pleadingly. “I don’t think we can eat anything. And it’s time we were on the trail. Please excuse us and let us go on.”

  Mrs. Matilda Pitman shook a knitting needle playfully at Kate. “Sit down and take your breakfast,” she commanded. “Mrs. Matilda Pitman commands you. Everybody obeys Mrs. Matilda Pitman — even Robert and Amelia. You must obey her too.”

  We did obey her. We sat down and, such was the influence of her mesmeric eyes, we ate a tolerable breakfast. The obedient Amelia never spoke; Mrs. Matilda Pitman did not speak either, but she knitted furiously and chuckled. When we had finished Mrs. Matilda Pitman rolled up her knitting. “Now, you can go if you want to,” she said, “but you don’t have to go. You can stay here as long as you like, and I’ll make them cook your meals for you.”

  I never saw Kate so thoroughly cowed.

  “Thank you,” she said faintly. “You are very kind, but we must go.”

  “Well, then,” said Mrs. Matilda Pitman, throwing open the door, “your team is ready for you. I made Robert catch your ponies and harness them. And I made him fix that broken tongue properly. I enjoy making Robert do things. It’s almost the only sport I have left. I’m eighty and most things have lost their flavour, except bossing Robert.”

  Our democrat and ponies were outside the door, but Robert was nowhere to be seen; in fact, we never saw him again.

  “I do wish,” said Kate, plucking up what little spirit she had left, “that you would let us — ah — uh” — Kate quailed before Mrs. Matilda Pitman’s eye—”recompense you for our entertainment.”

  “Mrs. Matilda Pitman said before — and meant it — that she doesn’t take pay for entertaining strangers, nor let other people where she lives do it, much as their meanness would like to do it.”

  We got away. The sulky Amelia had vanished, and there was nobody to see us off except Mrs. Matilda Pitman.

  “Don’t forget to call the next time you come this way,” she said cheerfully, waving her knitting at us. “I hope you’ll get safe to Bothwell. If I was ten years younger I vow I’d pack a grip and go along with you. I like your spunk. Most of the girls nowadays is such timid, skeery critters. When I was a girl I wasn’t afraid of nothing or nobody.”

  We said and did nothing until we had driven out of sight and earshot. Then Kate laid down the reins and laughed until the tears came.

  “Oh, Phil, Phil, will you ever forget this adventure?” she gasped.

  “I shall never forget Mrs. Matilda Pitman,” I said emphatically.

  We had no further adventures that day. Robert Chapman had fixed the tongue so well — probably under Mrs. Matilda Pitman’s watchful eyes — that we could drive as fast as we liked; and we made good progress. But when we pitched camp that night Kate scanned the sky with an anxious expression. “I don’t like the look of it,” she said. “I’m afraid we’re going to have a bad day tomorrow.”

  We had. When we awakened in the morning rain was pouring down. This in itself might not have prevented us from travelling, but the state of the trail did. It had been raining the greater part of the night and the trail was little more than a ditch of slimy, greasy, sticky mud.

  If we could have stayed in the tent the whole time it would not have been quite so bad. But we had to go out twice to take the ponies to the nearest pond and water them; moreover, we had to collect pea vines for them, which was not an agreeable occupation in a pouring rain. The day was very cold too, but fortunately there was plenty of dead poplar right by our camp. We kept a good fire on in the camp stove and were quite dry and comfortable as long as we stayed inside. Even when we had to go out we did not get very wet, as we were well protected. But it was a long dreary day. Finally when the dark came down and supper was over Kate grew quite desperate. “Let’s have a game of checkers,” she suggested.

  “Where is your checkerboard?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’ll soon furnish that,” said Kate.

  She cut out a square of brown paper, in which a biscuit box had been wrapped, and marked squares off on it with a pencil. Then she produced some red and white high-bush cranberries for men. A cranberry split in two was a king.

  We played nine games of checkers by the light of our smoky lantern. Our enjoyment of the game was heightened by the fact that it had ceased raining. Nevertheless, when morning came the trail was so drenched that it was impossible to travel on it.

  “We must wait till noon,” said Kate.

  “That trail won’t be dry enough to travel on for a week,” I said disconsolately.

  “My dear; the chinook is blowing up,” said Kate. “You don’t know how quickly a trail dries in a chinook. It’s like magic.”

  I did not believe a chinook or anything else could dry up that trail by noon sufficiently for us to travel on. But it did. As Kate said, it seemed like magic. By one o’clock we were on our way again, the chinook blowing merrily against our faces. It was a wind that blew straight from the heart of the wilderness and had in it all the potent lure of the wild. The yellow prairie laughed and glistened in the sun.

  We made twenty-five miles that afternoon and, as we were again fortunate enough to find a bluff of dead poplar near which to camp, we built a royal camp-fire which sent its flaming light far and wide over the dark prairie.

  We were in jubilant spirits. If the next day were fine and nothing dreadful happened to us, we would reach Bothwell before night.

  But our ill luck was not yet at an end. The next morning was beautiful. The sun shone warm and bright; the chinook blew balmily and alluringly; the trail stretched before us dry and level. But we sat moodily before our tent, not even having sufficient heart to play checkers. Tom had gone lame — so lame that there was no use in thinking of trying to travel with him. Kate could not tell what was the matter.

  “There is no injury that I can see,” she said. “He must have sprained his foot somehow.”

  Wait we did, with all the patience we could command. But the day was long and wearisome, and at night Tom’s foot did not seem a bit better.

  We went to bed gloomily, but joy came with the morning. Tom’s foot was so much improved that Kate decided we could go on, though we would have to drive slowly.

  “There’s no chance of making Bothwell today,” she said, “but at least we shall be getting a little nearer to it.”

  “I don’t believe there is such a place as Bothwell, or any other town,” I said pessimistically. “There’s nothing in the world but prairie, and we’ll go on driving over it forever, like a couple of female Wandering Jews. It seems years since we left Arrow Creek.”

  “Well, we’ve had lots of fun out of it all, you know,” said Kate. “Mrs. Matilda Pitman alone was worth it. She will be an amusing memory all our lives. Are you sorry you came?”

  “No, I’m not,” I concluded, after honest, soul-searching reflection. “No, I’m glad, Kate. But I think we were crazy to attempt it, as Sergeant Baker said. Think of all the might-have-beens.”

  “Nothing else will happen,” said Kate. “I feel in my bones that our troubles are over.”

  Kate’s bones proved true prophets. Nevertheless, that day was a weary one. There was no scenery. We had got into a barren, lakeless, treeless district where the world was one monotonous expanse of grey-brown prairie. We just crawled along. Kate had her hands full driving those ponies. Jerry was in capi
tal fettle and couldn’t understand why he mightn’t tear ahead at full speed. He was so much disgusted over being compelled to walk that he was very fractious. Poor Tom limped patiently along. But by night his lameness had quite disappeared, and although we were still a good twenty-five miles from Bothwell we could see it quite distinctly far ahead on the level prairie.

  “’Tis a sight for sore eyes, isn’t it?” said Kate, as we pitched camp.

  There is little more to be told. Next day at noon we rattled through the main and only street of Bothwell. Curious sights are frequent in prairie towns, so we did not attract much attention. When we drew up before Mr. Taylor’s house Mary Taylor flew out and embraced Kate publicly.

  “You darling! I knew you’d get here if anyone could. They telegraphed us you were on the way. You’re a brick — two bricks.”

  “No, I’m not a brick at all, Miss Taylor,” I confessed frankly. “I’ve been an arrant coward and a doubting Thomas and a wet blanket all through the expedition. But Kate is a brick and a genius and an all-round, jolly good fellow.”

  “Mary,” said Kate in a tragic whisper, “have — you — any — ham — in — the — house?”

  Jessamine

  When the vegetable-man knocked, Jessamine went to the door wearily. She felt quite well acquainted with him. He had been coming all the spring, and his cheery greeting always left a pleasant afterglow behind him. But it was not the vegetable-man after all — at least, not the right one. This one was considerably younger. He was tall and sunburned, with a ruddy, smiling face, and keen, pleasant blue eyes; and he had a spray of honeysuckle pinned on his coat.