The Man Who Forgot
I knew them all well... I had been minister in Claremont for ten years when it happened. In fact, it was I who preached the fatal sermon that shut the door of the past behind Gordon Mitchell. Not that I so much as thought of Gordon Mitchell when I preached it.
If a minister preaches a sermon that hits home to some particular individual, people always suppose he meant it for that very person. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred he never thought of him. A hand-me-down cap is bound to fit somebody’s head, but it doesn’t follow that it was made for him.
Dr. Stirling—”Old Doc” as he was affectionately called by everybody in Claremont — and his daughter, Gertrude, were particular friends of mine. They were not the kind of people to whom a minister dare not say anything until he has said it over to himself first to make sure it is a safe thing to say. Old Doc was one of my elders and we fought continually over church problems, but that did not interfere with our friendship. By a tacit agreement we never spoke of church affairs when I went to his house. We left that for the session room.
The Stirling house was at the extreme west of Claremont. It was an old house — the doctor’s father, who had been a lawyer, and his grandfather, who had been a merchant, had lived their long lives out in it before him. Moreover, it was the ugliest house, not only in Claremont, but in the whole world — there is no doubt about that. It was more like a huge red brick box than anything else, too high for its breadth, and made still higher by a bulbous glass cupola on top.
But the doctor would never have it altered; he loved it as it was. The fine old trees around it veiled its ugliness somewhat, and inside — oh, there was nothing the matter with it there.
Internally it was a house of delightful personality. And the living room was the most delightful room in it. There the doctor and Gertrude always entertained their guests. It was a spacious, beautiful, dignified, friendly old room. The chairs clamoured to be sat upon; the mirrors had so often reflected beautiful women that they lent a certain charm to every face. In that room, it seemed to me, there were always in winter warm fires, old books, comfort, safety from storm, odours of pine; and in summer, coolness and shadows and wine-hues of flowers.
And Jigglesqueak! Jigglesqueak was always there winter and summer. It seemed to me he must always have been there, though Old Doc said he was a mere pup of fourteen. He was as ugly as the house and, like the house, had a beautiful soul.
Everybody loved Jigglesqueak. The sole point Old Doc and Anthony Fairweather had in common was their love of Jigglesqueak. They both agreed that Jigglesqueak was the only dog on earth that deserved to be a dog.
Old Doc was a character in his way. Claremont people believed that he could raise the dead to life if he wanted to and only refrained because it would be crossing the purposes of the Almighty.
He had done it once, they said. I have been solemnly assured by many sane people that Dan Hewlett was dead when Old Doc brought him to. You can believe that or not as you like.
But when living people saw Old Doc’s long, lean face, with its big bushy white moustache and twinkling brown eyes, at their bedside and heard him growling, “There’s nothing the matter with you”... why, they believed it until it was true.
He was a brusque old fellow and, older and all as he was, it didn’t prevent him from rapping out a good round “d — n” when occasion offered, even before the cloth. Outside of Gertrude, his work, and Jigglesqueak, the only thing he cared for was golf. Our Claremont links are good in their way, and Old Doc was the best golfer in the burg — unless it was Anthony Fairweather. Nothing made Old Doc so furious as a hint that Anthony Fairweather could rival him in golf. But then, Old Doc did not like Anthony.
And Gertrude did!
Gertrude was about twenty at this time, a tall girl so stately that at school she had always been nicknamed “The Princess.” As a child she had been rather plain, but now she was beautiful — with a beauty you never tired of. Hair as black as the proverbial raven’s wing, eyes as blue as eyes could be, lips as softly red as the queen of roses. She was restrained and subtle, with exquisite taste, a wonderful laugh, and a personality that shone through her beautiful flesh like a lamp through alabaster.
Naturally she had some faults. She was a shade too fond of jewels and wore too many — it was the sole flaw in her taste. Some people said she overdressed, but I never thought it. Rich as her clothes were they were always subordinate to her. Her father liked to see her beautifully gowned.
And she was impatient. It could not be said that she suffered fools gladly. Also, she was stubborn, and I think if she had lived with other women those women would have had to play second fiddle in most things. But there was no other woman except a little maid in the house — never had been, since Gertrude’s mother had died at her birth. That was one time Old Doc could not bring back the dead.
He had brought Gertrude up by himself without assistance from any woman and was a little over-proud of it — and of her. Yet she justified his pride — beautiful, gracious, humorous, companionable, tolerant, loyal. If I had been a young man instead of an old bachelor minister I would have been mad about her.
All the Qaremont young men were, but the only two who mattered were Anthony Fairweather and Gordon Mitchell. Only one of them mattered to Gertrude — Anthony Fairweather.
But Old Doc, who would rather have liked her to marry Gordon if marry she must, was determined she shouldn’t marry Anthony.
“Because of his Italian blood,” he said.
But in my heart I always believed that it was because he wouldn’t have a son-in-law who could rival him in golf.
To be sure, Old Doc had always detested Anthony. Everybody else in Claremont liked him and distrusted him, with the exception of Gordon Mitchell and myself. Gordon didn’t like him and I didn’t distrust him.
Captain Fairweather some twenty-two years before had married an Italian girl and brought her home to Claremont. It was before my time, but I gathered that Claremont had not taken Mrs. Fairweather to its bosom. She died when Anthony was four years old. Captain Fairweather broke his heart and followed her three years later, leaving Anthony to the care of a grim old aunt who brought him up rigorously and always believed he was just watching for a chance to do something dreadful.
If he had inherited his father’s plump, rosy face and big blue eyes he would have stood a better chance. But Anthony had his handsome mother’s dark eyes, smooth olive skin, and glossy, night-black hair. He “looked foreign” — old Margaret Grimes asserted it when she bathed him in the first hour of his life.
Certainly he always had a grace and fire and charm that no other Claremont boy possessed. And, from the day of his christening when he had pummelled the nose of the officiating minister, Anthony was always in the limelight by reason of some graceless exploit or other. He stole apples, he put up a placard of measles where there were none, he dropped a lump of ice down the Reverend John Arnold’s neck at a church supper, he stuck pins in the other boys in Sunday School, he took an alarm clock to church, he wrote a false but truthful obituary of a prominent citizen and sent it to the Croyden papers, he put a plateful of soap instead of cheese on the table at my induction festivities, and he was accused of shutting the skunk up in the classroom.
In any other boy all this would just have been considered natural boy-devilment, but in poor Anthony it was, of course, “that Italian blood.”
Everything that was a mystery was pinned to him. But nobody except Old Doc really believed that Anthony started the fire that burned half the village down when he was about fifteen — the fire in which he almost lost his life saving the horses in Alex Peasley’s stable.
That act won him approval in Claremont eyes, and public opinion was beginning to veer in his favour when a silly anonymous “poem” was published in the Claremont Weekly, making fun of all our prominent folks. Anthony was put down for the author, in spite of all his denials, and was never forgiven for it, since nobody ever forgives ridicule.
I knew he never wrote it. If he had, it wouldn’t have been such insane trash — it would have cut to the bone. For Anthony had brains, though people were loath to admit it. They couldn’t see how it was possible when he was “so fond of fiddling.”
There was one thing they couldn’t blame on his Italian blood — his gift for swimming. Captain Fairweather had been a star swimmer. Anthony swam across the Claremont river when he was eight years old and people bragged of the exploit to strangers for years in spite of Anthony’s disrepute. Swimming, golfing, and fiddling were Anthony’s hobbies, and he rode them so devotedly that he had no time to get into any serious scrapes. But people expected he would some day, and Old Doc both expected and hoped it.
Anthony and Gertrude had been playfellows in childhood, his home being across the street from hers. Once Anthony inveigled Gertrude away to the shore and they got caught in the quicksand and nearly swallowed up. That gave Old Doc his first scunner of Anthony. And when Gertrude fell off the stilts on which Anthony was teaching her to walk and hurt her back so that she was laid up for weeks, Old Doc was his enemy for life, although Gertrude always insisted that it wasn’t Anthony’s fault at all.
Her father forbade her ever playing with Anthony again, and she had nothing more to do with him until they met one night at a dance nine years later and loved each other — loved deeply, passionately, incurably. Naturally I was not at the dance, but I soon heard all about it. Old Doc himself told me.
He was furious — had forbidden Anthony the house, and had told Gertrude she was a fool. Gertrude had merely smiled and settled down to wait. She worshipped her father and wouldn’t have disobeyed or hurt him, even for Anthony. But she knew time was on her side; she knew her father would come round in due course.
She and Anthony couldn’t be married for a few years anyway. He had to get through college — he was attending the university in Croyden and coming home for weekends. Gertrude took it all with a fair degree of philosophy, except that she was horribly annoyed with Gordon Mitchell, who lived next door to the Stirlings and had long ago made up his mind to marry Gertrude. It did not discourage him at all to know that she had an understanding with Anthony Fairweather. Gordon knew that Old Doc was on his side and he had, besides, quite a bit of confidence in his own powers of attraction.
I ought to have liked Gordon: he was the most faithful member of my adult Bible class. He had always been what is called “religiously inclined,” which shouldn’t have been a count against him in a minister’s eyes. Anthony once called him a “smug little hypocrite,” but he was nothing of the sort. He was sincere and always impressed me as being morbidly conscientious. His mother told me that once, when a boy, he had stolen a jar of marmalade from the pantry and after a week of torment had confessed to her and done penance by crawling on bare hands and knees across the thistly meadow behind their lot. She seemed rather proud of this and of some similar things.
Gordon was likable enough in a superficial way and was popular in Claremont society. He was quite good-looking, with regular features, thick fair hair parted in the middle, and small, well-kept hands of which he was said to be very vain. In boyhood he was reputed to be a “sissy” owing to the fact or belief that at seven years of age he had pieced a quilt. His mother was foolish enough to mention it with pride. But he had lived this down.
He sang fairly well — though Gertrude said his voice was “muddy,” whatever she meant by that — and was a member of the choir. His reputation was immaculate, and he took care people should know it. Besides being, as I have said, morbidly conscientious, he was abnormally sensitive to the opinions of other people. He was intelligent but had no sense of humour whatever — even Old Doc admitted that. But in every other respect Old Doc thought him a model and was exasperated because Gertrude didn’t fancy him.
Gertrude admitted that he had an immense number of points.
“But he doesn’t add up right,” she said.
“What fault can you find in him?” challenged Old Doc angrily.
“None. But he tastes flat. He has all the virtues, but the pinch of salt was left out,” said Gertrude, with her nose in the air.
Old Doc snorted and kicked a chair across the room.
“I can’t see why you don’t like him.”
“But I do like him,” asseverated Gertrude. “I like fully half the young men in Claremont. What then? I can’t marry half the young men in Claremont, can I?”
“What can you do with a girl like that?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” I said, “but let her marry Anthony.”
“Never,” said Old Doc, punishing his left hand with his right. “If you back Anthony up, Crandall, I swear I’ll leave your church and go over to the Baptists.”
I kept silence thereafter, not because I was afraid of Old Doc going over to the Baptists — who wouldn’t have taken him as a gift — but because I knew I would only do Anthony harm by sticking up for him.
Gordon had a good position in his uncle’s store and would eventually be head man and his uncle’s heir. He was kind and obliging, but I always thought he was selfish. Certainly his mother spoiled him. His father was dead and she doted on Gordon. She was not in the least like him — she was a tall, austere, reserved woman who, for some reason I never could fathom, was a tremendous favourite with Old Doc.
Anthony and Gordon had always hated each other, even long before they set their fancy on the same woman. They were enemies when they were boys. Gordon aggravated Anthony by sneering at his Italian mother one day, and Anthony took off Gordon’s trousers and made him go home through Claremont in his poor little shirt-tail. Then Gordon poisoned Anthony’s dog.
To be sure, he always asserted that he meant the poison for a mongrel from over the river that was always snooping around, stealing. I believed him, for I knew Gordon would never have flouted public opinion by poisoning respectable village dogs. But Anthony didn’t. From that day he hated Gordon with an indescribable intensity — the Italian blood did come out there. Yet I thought Gordon’s hatred the deadlier thing of the two.
I think Gordon was quite sure he would win Gertrude. He couldn’t believe that any girl would remain persistently indifferent to him. Anthony had cast some bewitchment over her, but that would pass — especially when Anthony, having got through college, suddenly shot off to Montreal to attend the School of Mines. He had sold his old Strad for nine hundred dollars to get board money. Nobody in Claremont but myself — not even Gertrude, I believe — realized what selling it meant to him. He walked the floor o’ nights for a week afterwards. He told me he felt as if he had sold his own flesh and blood.
I went down to the Stirlings the night after Anthony had gone away and found Old Doc nearly speechless with rage. Anthony, it seemed, had come boldly there the previous evening to say goodbye to Gertrude, and Gertrude had insisted on seeing him and seeing him alone. But this wasn’t what had maddened Old Doc.
It was the fact that Anthony had deliberately and wantonly — and apparently with Gertrude’s toleration — adorned with horns and a tail a photograph of Gordon Mitchell that was standing on the piano. If Anthony had actually transmogrified Gordon into a devil Old Doc couldn’t have been more worked up about it. He called Anthony all the names he could lay his tongue to — Old Doc’s vocabulary of abuse was peculiarly rich — and prophesied a violent end for him.
“I hope not,” I said mildly. “I shouldn’t like to see your son-in-law hanged.”
“Son-in-law! He’ll never be a son-in-law of mine. No, thank God, I’ve fixed that. Gertrude has solemnly promised me that she’ll never marry Anthony Fairweather without my consent. You know how likely she is to get that.”
Yes, I knew. I knew quite well that after Old Doc had fumed for a year or two, while Gertrude sat tight, he would suddenly give in and tell her to marry the Old Boy if she wanted to. I suppose Old Doc sensed something of this in my face, for he roared, “What are you chuckling inside about, Crandall? Do you think she won’t keep he
r promise? I tell you she will.”
I knew that too. Old Doc had brought Gertrude up to keep a promise. It was one of the few things he had put immense insistence upon. There was a sore spot somewhere in Old Doc — he had suffered horribly once because of someone’s broken promise — I never heard the rights of the story — and he was determined that Gertrude should have it grained into her never to break a promise once given.
I knew she never would but I wasn’t much worried over it. In spite of that promise I knew that Gordon Mitchell, hanging around more persistently than ever now that Anthony was gone, had just about as good a chance of marrying Gertrude Stirling as I had. Gertrude smiled and went to dances and flirted a wee bit with nice boys and wore delightful clothes and petted her father and thoroughly enjoyed herself.
And Old Doc left that bedizened photograph of Gordon on his desk and swore unholy oaths over it every day. Sometimes he raged at Gertrude because she wouldn’t look on Gordon with favour.
“You forget that I’ve promised Anthony that I will never marry any man but him,” she would say sweetly. “I have to keep that promise as well as the other. You’ve always told me I must never break a promise.”
Old Doc would glare.
“Anthony... Anthony... the man who said he had only to ask you to get you!”
“He never said it,” Gertrude would smile maddeningly. “But if he did... it would have been true.”
This rendered Old Doc speechless.
Gordon really had very little sense about his courting. He had, of course, no chance with Gertrude, no matter what he did or didn’t do, but with some women he might have had a chance if he had kept away for a time and left them alone. Instead, he exasperated her by haunting the place and forcing his attentions upon her everywhere. She grew to hate the sight of him. Old Doc had less sense also in the matter than I should have expected of him. He had become quite chummy with Gordon and even tried to teach him to play golf. He would never have tried it if he had thought Gordon would make a golfer, but there was no danger. Gordon couldn’t see anything in it.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 755