“It seems to me you’re looking pretty fit, Jims. Do you want to go to the country?”
“No, please.”
“Are you happy, Jims?”
“Sometimes.”
“A boy should be happy all the time, Jims.”
“If I had a mother and someone to play with I would be.”
“I have tried to be a mother to you, Jims,” said Aunt Augusta, in an offended tone. Then she addressed Uncle Walter. “A younger woman would probably understand him better. And I feel that the care of this big place is too much for me. I would prefer to go to my own old home. If you had married long ago, as you should, Walter, James would have had a mother and some cousins to play with. I have always been of this opinion.”
Uncle Walter frowned and got up.
“Just because one woman played you false is no good reason for spoiling your life,” went on Aunt Augusta severely. “I have kept silence all these years but now I am going to speak — and speak plainly. You should marry, Walter. You are young enough yet and you owe it to your name.”
“Listen, Augusta,” said Uncle Walter sternly. “I loved a woman once. I believed she loved me. She sent me back my ring one day and with it a message saying she had ceased to care for me and bidding me never to try to look upon her face again. Well, I have obeyed her, that is all.”
“There was something strange about all that, Walter. The life she has since led proves that. So you should not let it embitter you against all women.”
“I haven’t. It’s nonsense to say I’m a woman-hater, Augusta. But that experience has robbed me of the power to care for another woman.”
“Well, this isn’t a proper conversation for a child to hear,” said Aunt Augusta, recollecting herself. “Jims, go out.”
Jims would have given one of his ears to stay and listen with the other. But he went obediently.
And then, the very next day, the dreaded something happened.
It was the first of August and very, very hot. Jims was late coming to dinner and Aunt Augusta reproved him and Jims, deliberately, and with malice aforethought, told her he thought she was a nasty old woman. He had never been saucy to Aunt Augusta before. But it was three days since he had seen Miss Avery and the Black Prince and Nip and he was desperate. Aunt Augusta crimsoned with anger and doomed Jims to an afternoon in the blue room for impertinence.
“And I shall tell your uncle when he comes home,” she added.
That rankled, for Jims didn’t want Uncle Walter to think him impertinent. But he forgot all his worries as he scampered through the Garden of Spices to the beech tree. And there Jims stopped as if he had been shot. Prone on the grass under the beech tree, white and cold and still, lay his Miss Avery — dead, stone dead!
At least Jims drought she was dead. He flew into the house like a mad thing, shrieking for Martha. Nobody answered. Jims recollected, with a rush of sickening dread, that Miss Avery had told him Martha and Edward were going away that day to visit a sister. He rushed blindly across the lawn again, through the little side gate he had never passed before and down the street home. Uncle Walter was just opening the door of his car.
“Uncle Walter — come — come,” sobbed Jims, clutching frantically at his hand. “Miss Avery’s dead — dead — oh, come quick.”
“Who is dead?”
“Miss Avery — Miss Avery Garland. She’s lying on the grass over there in her garden. And I love her so — and I’ll die, too — oh, Uncle Walter, come.”
Uncle Walter looked as if he wanted to ask some questions, but he said nothing. With a strange face he hurried after Jims. Miss Avery was still lying there. As Uncle Walter bent over her he saw the broad red scar and started back with an exclamation.
“She is dead?” gasped Jims.
“No,” said Uncle Walter, bending down again—”no, she has only fainted, Jims — overcome by the heat, I suppose. I want help. Go and call somebody.”
“There’s no one home here to-day,” said Jims, in a spasm of joy so great that it shook him like a leaf.
“Then go home and telephone over to Mr. Loring’s. Tell them I want the nurse who is there to come here for a few minutes.”
Jims did his errand. Uncle Walter and the nurse carried Miss Avery into the house and then Jims went back to the blue room. He was so unhappy he didn’t care where he went. He wished something would jump at him out of the bed and put an end to him. Everything was discovered now and he would never see Miss Avery again. Jims lay very still on the window seat. He did not even cry. He had come to one of the griefs that lie too deep for tears.
“I think I must have been put under a curse at birth,” thought poor Jims.
Over at the stone house Miss Avery was lying on the couch in her room. The nurse had gone away and Dr. Walter was sitting looking at her. He leaned forward and pulled away the hand with which she was hiding the scar on her face. He looked first at the little gold ring on the hand and then at the scar.
“Don’t,” she said piteously.
“Avery — why did you do it? — why did you do it?”
“Oh, you know — you must know now, Walter.”
“Avery, did you break my heart and spoil my life — and your own — simply because your face was scarred?”
“I couldn’t bear to have you see me hideous,” she moaned. “You had been so proud of my beauty. I — I — thought you couldn’t love me any more — I couldn’t bear the thought of looking in your eyes and seeing aversion there.”
Walter Grant leaned forward.
“Look in my eyes, Avery. Do you see any aversion?”
Avery forced herself to look. What she saw covered her face with a hot blush.
“Did you think my love such a poor and superficial thing, Avery,” he said sternly, “that it must vanish because a blemish came on your fairness? Do you think that would change me? Was your own love for me so slight?”
“No — no,” she sobbed. “I have loved you every moment of my life, Walter. Oh, don’t look at me so sternly.”
“If you had even told me,” he said. “You said I was never to try to look on your face again — and they told me you had gone away. You sent me back my ring.”
“I kept the old one,” she interrupted, holding out her hand, “the first one you ever gave me — do you remember, Walter? When we were boy and girl.”
“You robbed me of all that made life worth while, Avery. Do you wonder that I’ve been a bitter man?”
“I was wrong — I was wrong,” she sobbed. “I should have believed in you. But don’t you think I’ve paid, too? Forgive me, Walter — it’s too late to atone — but forgive me.”
“Is it too late?” he asked gravely.
She pointed to the scar.
“Could you endure seeing this opposite to you every day at your table?” she asked bitterly.
“Yes — if I could see your sweet eyes and your beloved smile with it, Avery,” he answered passionately. “Oh, Avery, it was you I loved — not your outward favor. Oh, how foolish you were — foolish and morbid! You always put too high a value on beauty, Avery. If I had dreamed of the true state of the case — if I had known you were here all these years — why I heard a rumor long ago that you had married, Avery — but if I had known I would have come to you and made you be — sensible.”
She gave a little laugh at his lame conclusion. That was so like the old Walter. Then her eyes filled with tears as he took her in his arms.
The door of the blue room opened. Jims did not look up. It was Aunt Augusta, of course — and she had heard the whole story.
“Jims, boy.”
Jims lifted his miserable eyes. It was Uncle Walter — but a different Uncle Walter — an Uncle Walter with laughing eyes and a strange radiance of youth about him.
“Poor, lonely little fellow,” said Uncle Walter unexpectedly. “Jims, would you like Miss Avery to come here — and live with us always — and be your real aunt?”
“Great snakes!” said Jims, transformed
in a second. “Is there any chance of that?”
“There is a certainty, thanks to you,” said Uncle Walter. “You can go over to see her for a little while. Don’t talk her to death — she’s weak yet — and attend to that menagerie of yours over there — she’s worrying because the bull dog and gobbler weren’t fed — and Jims—”
But Jims had swung down through the pine and was tearing across the Garden of Spices.
The Girl and the Photograph
When I heard that Peter Austin was in Vancouver I hunted him up. I had met Peter ten years before when I had gone east to visit my father’s people and had spent a few weeks with an uncle in Croyden. The Austins lived across the street from Uncle Tom, and Peter and I had struck up a friendship, although he was a hobbledehoy of awkward sixteen and I, at twenty-two, was older and wiser and more dignified than I’ve ever been since or ever expect to be again. Peter was a jolly little round freckled chap. He was all right when no girls were around; when they were he retired within himself like a misanthropic oyster, and was about as interesting. This was the one point upon which we always disagreed. Peter couldn’t endure girls; I was devoted to them by the wholesale. The Croyden girls were pretty and vivacious. I had a score of flirtations during my brief sojourn among them.
But when I went away the face I carried in my memory was not that of any girl with whom I had walked and driven and played the game of hearts.
It was ten years ago, but I had never been quite able to forget that girl’s face. Yet I had seen it but once and then only for a moment. I had gone for a solitary ramble in the woods over the river and, in a lonely little valley dim with pines, where I thought myself alone, I had come suddenly upon her, standing ankle-deep in fern on the bank of a brook, the late evening sunshine falling yellowly on her uncovered dark hair. She was very young — no more than sixteen; yet the face and eyes were already those of a woman. Such a face! Beautiful? Yes, but I thought of that afterward, when I was alone. With that face before my eyes I thought only of its purity and sweetness, of the lovely soul and rich mind looking out of the great, greyish-blue eyes which, in the dimness of the pine shadows, looked almost black. There was something in the face of that child-woman I had never seen before and was destined never to see again in any other face. Careless boy though I was, it stirred me to the deeps. I felt that she must have been waiting forever in that pine valley for me and that, in finding her, I had found all of good that life could offer me.
I would have spoken to her, but before I could shape my greeting into words that should not seem rude or presumptuous, she had turned and gone, stepping lightly across the brook and vanishing in the maple copse beyond. For no more than ten seconds had I gazed into her face, and the soul of her, the real woman behind the fair outwardness, had looked back into my eyes; but I had never been able to forget it.
When I returned home I questioned my cousins diplomatically as to who she might be. I felt strangely reluctant to do so — it seemed in some way sacrilege; yet only by so doing could I hope to discover her. They could tell me nothing; nor did I meet her again during the remainder of my stay in Croyden, although I never went anywhere without looking for her, and haunted the pine valley daily, in the hope of seeing her again. My disappointment was so bitter that I laughed at myself.
I thought I was a fool to feel thus about a girl I had met for a moment in a chance ramble — a mere child at that, with her hair still hanging in its long glossy schoolgirl braid. But when I remembered her eyes, my wisdom forgave me.
Well, that was ten years ago; in those ten years the memory had, I must confess, grown dimmer. In our busy western life a man had not much time for sentimental recollections. Yet I had never been able to care for another woman. I wanted to; I wanted to marry and settle down. I had come to the time of life when a man wearies of drifting and begins to hanker for a calm anchorage in some snug haven of his own. But, somehow, I shirked the matter. It seemed rather easier to let things slide.
At this stage Peter came west. He was something in a bank, and was as round and jolly as ever; but he had evidently changed his attitude towards girls, for his rooms were full of their photos. They were stuck around everywhere and they were all pretty. Either Peter had excellent taste, or the Croyden photographers knew how to flatter. But there was one on the mantel which attracted my attention especially. If the photo were to be trusted the girl was quite the prettiest I had ever seen.
“Peter, what pretty girl’s picture is this on your mantel?” I called out to Peter, who was in his bedroom, donning evening dress for some function.
“That’s my cousin, Marian Lindsay,” he answered. “She is rather nice-looking, isn’t she. Lives in Croyden now — used to live up the river at Chiselhurst. Didn’t you ever chance across her when you were in Croyden?”
“No,” I said. “If I had I wouldn’t have forgotten her face.”
“Well, she’d be only a kid then, of course. She’s twenty-six now. Marian is a mighty nice girl, but she’s bound to be an old maid. She’s got notions — ideals, she calls ‘em. All the Croyden fellows have been in love with her at one time or another but they might as well have made up to a statue. Marian really hasn’t a spark of feeling or sentiment in her. Her looks are the best part of her, although she’s confoundedly clever.”
Peter spoke rather squiffily. I suspected that he had been one of the smitten swains himself. I looked at the photo for a few minutes longer, admiring it more every minute and, when I heard Peter coming out, I did an unjustifiable thing — I took that photo and put it in my pocket.
I expected Peter would make a fuss when he missed it, but that very night the house in which he lived was burned to the ground. Peter escaped with the most important of his goods and chattels, but all the counterfeit presentments of his dear divinities went up in smoke. If he ever thought particularly of Marian Lindsay’s photograph he must have supposed that it shared the fate of the others.
As for me, I propped my ill-gotten treasure up on my mantel and worshipped it for a fortnight. At the end of that time I went boldly to Peter and told him I wanted him to introduce me by letter to his dear cousin and ask her to agree to a friendly correspondence with me.
Oddly enough, I did not do this without some reluctance, in spite of the fact that I was as much in love with Marian Lindsay as it was possible to be through the medium of a picture. I thought of the girl I had seen in the pine wood and felt an inward shrinking from a step that might divide me from her forever. But I rated myself for this nonsense. It was in the highest degree unlikely that I should ever meet the girl of the pines again. If she were still living she was probably some other man’s wife. I would think no more about it.
Peter whistled when he heard what I had to say.
“Of course I’ll do it, old man,” he said obligingly. “But I warn you I don’t think it will be much use. Marian isn’t the sort of girl to open up a correspondence in such a fashion. However, I’ll do the best I can for you.”
“Do. Tell her I’m a respectable fellow with no violent bad habits and all that. I’m in earnest, Peter. I want to make that girl’s acquaintance, and this seems the only way at present. I can’t get off just now for a trip east. Explain all this, and use your cousinly influence in my behalf if you possess any.”
Peter grinned.
“It’s not the most graceful job in the world you are putting on me, Curtis,” he said. “I don’t mind owning up now that I was pretty far gone on Marian myself two years ago. It’s all over now, but it was bad while it lasted. Perhaps Marian will consider your request more favourably if I put it in the light of a favour to myself. She must feel that she owes me something for wrecking my life.”
Peter grinned again and looked at the one photo he had contrived to rescue from the fire. It was a pretty, snub-nosed little girl. She would never have consoled me for the loss of Marian Lindsay, but every man to his taste.
In due time Peter sought me out to give me his cousin’s answer.
&n
bsp; “Congratulations, Curtis. You’ve out-Caesared Caesar. You’ve conquered without even going and seeing. Marian agrees to a friendly correspondence with you. I am amazed, I admit — even though I did paint you up as a sort of Sir Galahad and Lancelot combined. I’m not used to seeing proud Marian do stunts like that, and it rather takes my breath.”
I wrote to Marian Lindsay after one farewell dream of the girl under the pines. When Marian’s letters began to come regularly I forgot the other one altogether.
Such letters — such witty, sparkling, clever, womanly, delightful letters! They completed the conquest her picture had begun. Before we had corresponded six months I was besottedly in love with this woman whom I had never seen. Finally, I wrote and told her so, and I asked her to be my wife.
A fortnight later her answer came. She said frankly that she believed she had learned to care for me during our correspondence, but that she thought we should meet in person, before coming to any definite understanding. Could I not arrange to visit Croyden in the summer? Until then we would better continue on our present footing.
I agreed to this, but I considered myself practically engaged, with the personal meeting merely to be regarded as a sop to the Cerberus of conventionality. I permitted myself to use a decidedly lover-like tone in my letters henceforth, and I hailed it as a favourable omen that I was not rebuked for this, although Marian’s own letters still retained their pleasant, simple friendliness.
Peter had at first tormented me mercilessly about the affair, but when he saw I did not like his chaff he stopped it. Peter was always a good fellow. He realized that I regarded the matter seriously, and he saw me off when I left for the east with a grin tempered by honest sympathy and understanding.
“Good luck to you,” he said. “If you win Marian Lindsay you’ll win a pearl among women. I haven’t been able to grasp her taking to you in this fashion, though. It’s so unlike Marian. But, since she undoubtedly has, you are a lucky man.”
I arrived in Croyden at dusk and went to Uncle Tom’s. There I found them busy with preparations for a party to be given that night in honour of a girl friend who was visiting my cousin Edna. I was secretly annoyed, for I wanted to hasten at once to Marian. But I couldn’t decently get away, and on second thoughts I was consoled by the reflection that she would probably come to the party. I knew she belonged to the same social set as Uncle Tom’s girls. I should, however, have preferred our meeting to have been under different circumstances.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 730