“Amanda Page, stop talking like that! As for that doctor, he didn’t know what he was talking about. Anyhow, we never heard the rights of what he did say. Something about the trouble being in your sub—sub-something mind.”
“I’ve only got one mind! I wish he had to sit here year in and year out, a helpless burden on his friends. He’d know then whether I wanted to walk or not. Perhaps Jonas thinks it, too, since he’s always worrying me to marry him. Well I’ll try not to think of it. There’s John with the buggy. You might sprinkle a whiff of violet on me before you go. There’s a little left in the atomizer. I’m fond of violet perfume. It reminds me of happier days.”
“I’ll bring you home a new bottle,” promised Tillie. The violet perfume cost a dollar, and dollars were hard to come by. But she could take one of the three she had saved for a new hat. The hat could wait.
Amanda heard the buggy drive away down the lane with a secret smile of satisfaction. It was really nice to be alone once in a while. Tillie was a dear but there were times when she got on your nerves. She really was rather stupid. And she was always trying to cheer you up and entertain you and amuse you when you didn’t want to be cheered up or entertained or amused. Amanda generally found quite a bit of entertainment and amusement in her day-dreams. Gorgeous fantasies of luring princes and ruling empires—she, Amanda Page, of Upper Bartibog. If she had the use of her legs she would have been quite content to lure and rule Captain Jonas, but since she hadn’t it was fun to fly a bit higher in imagination.
She gazed complacently in the mirror on the wall opposite her chair. She really looked quite nice. Her hair gleamed like polished mahogany in the sunlight. Amanda had always been very proud of her beautiful hair, and her complexion was above the average. The Pages had all been born with good skin. There were not many women in Bartibog with as few wrinkles. That scarf around her full white throat was certainly becoming. It was rather a pity there was no likelihood of anyone—well, of Jonas—seeing it. Jonas noticed things like that, more than most men. She would certainly miss Jonas’ visits, and his lean, lined, kindly face smiling at her. Jonas had a nice smile. But it wasn’t fair to keep him dangling around when she could never marry him. She had made that very clear to him yesterday. It had all been rather dramatic and exciting. Amanda laid down her gingham cushion, leaned back in her chair, and savored her recollection of it. Captain Jonas had come in with an armful of pussywillows for her and had arranged them in her favorite vase. He was given to delicate little attentions like that. They had had their usual pleasant chat but at the end Captain Jonas had spoiled it all by again pleading with her to marry him.
“You know I can’t marry you—or anyone—when I haven’t the use of my legs,” Amanda had told him sadly for the umpteenth time. Her eyes had filled with tears. She could cry whenever she wanted to, which was a great asset because she could cry and be beautiful. She never made noises or grimaces. The tears just brimmed over and got tangled in her long fringing black lashes. It was them eyelashes did the trick, Captain Jonas told himself. No man could resist them.
“I don’t care a hoot whether you’ve got the use of your legs or not,” said Captain Jonas bitterly. She ought to know that by this time. It wasn’t her legs he wanted her for…though they were shapely enough, at least, what he could see of them below the blue dress. Amanda did not hold with too brief dresses. At any rate he had a fine view of her ankles and he reflected that he had never seen finer ankles in his life, and he had been around a bit in his time.
But the ankles were only incidental. He wanted Amanda to be waiting for him when he came home from a voyage. He wanted to sit beside her when rain drifted over the gray sea beyond the bar, when fogs crept up the harbour and made everything—even the ugly old houses at the fishing village—lovely and mysterious. He wanted to watch the evening star with her and the silvery moonlight paths over the water, the far dim shores jeweled with home lights. He wanted her to admire his delphiniums and his gorgeous splashes of nasturtiums than which there was nothing finer in either of the Bartibogs. It would be wonderful just to have her living in his house—his fine new white house with its red roof and its dormers at Lower Bartibog. He liked to think of her sitting there at his fireside, warm and cosy, while the winter winds ravened outside and the shadows of wild black cloud tore over the sands. He could never get things like this to her. Every word he uttered sounded clumsy when he talked to her. But he had made it clear to her for many years that he wanted her and only her for a wife, and never could want any other woman. And to have her turn around and say coolly that if he hunted about a bit he could find himself another girl was really too much to endure. For the first time in his life Captain Jonas felt that he was mad at Amanda.
“I never argue with a lady,” he said, “and I’m not looking for another girl. But I’m through with coming here and being advised to marry someone else. I’ll not come back again unless it’s to your funeral, since you seem to think you’ve got one foot in the grave the way you talk. So put that in pickle.”
“Dear me, I hope you’ll be in a better humor when you come back,” sighed Amanda. One tear succeeded in making its escape from her lashes and rolled down the round enticing cheek, which Captain Jonas in wild moods pictured himself kissing. But, possessed by all the anger of a patient man, tears, even Amanda’s tears, had no influence on him now.
“I’m not coming back. When you want me you can come to me. You know where I live: Journey’s End, Lower Bartibog, at your service. And so good-day to you, Miss Amanda Page.”
Captain Jonas had marched off and Amanda permitted herself the luxury of a few more tears while Tillie John was walking up the lane. What hurt her was Captain Jonas’ speech about going to him if she wanted him. When he knew she hadn’t the use of her legs! Or did he believe what the English doctor had said? Well, he was gone and for good. He would probably be sorry for what he had said when he cooled off, but the Hayes, like the Pages, never broke their word when it was once passed. And it was better so—far, far better so. Amanda was Tranquil and composed by the time Tillie John reached the house and had assumed her Madonna look.
The day passed quite agreeably to Amanda: she embroidered her cushion diligently; she ate her dinner, contriving to dispose of a fair amount of food despite her lack of appetite; she wistfully decided that a third slice of peppermint chocolate cake might be better left uneaten; and she was quietly arranging herself for a nap in her chair when Daniel Random opened the door and stood for an impressive moment on the threshold, his flaming red beard sweeping across his breast. His grizzled hair reached to his shoulders and he was hatless. His six feet of bone and sinew was clothed in a faded red sweater and ragged, faded blue overalls. Altogether, he was a rather extraordinary-looking creature with his red-hot brown eyes blazing in his very long, very narrow, deeply wrinkled face. There was undoubtedly something sinister about him but Amanda was not in the least alarmed. She had known old Daniel Random all her life and, years before, had laughed with the rest of the young fry over his religious spasms of prophetical fervor and strange frenzy. She had not seen him in any of them of late years and had heard they were growing worse but it would never have occurred to her to be afraid of poor crazy old Daniel Random. On the contrary she thought it would be rather amusing to hear what he had to say…a welcome break in the monotony of the day.
“Well, Daniel, and how are you?” she said cordially.
“I am seeking,” he said mysteriously. “Seeking for my soul.”
“Dear me, have you mislaid it?” queried Amanda with mild sarcasm. “You Randoms were always terrible careless creatures.”
Daniel advanced a few steps into the room.
“I have been told by the Heavenly God what I must do if I am to find my soul,” he said.
“And what is it? But won’t you have a chair?”
Daniel ignored her invitation. His eyes blazed. Really, thought Amanda, the poor man was terri
bly strung up.
“Sacrifice,” he said hollowly. “Sacrifice! I have been told to offer a sacrifice and I dare not disobey the Voice. Then I shall not only find my soul but the people of this community will be compelled to realize the danger of delaying any longer their acceptance of the truth that the end is near at hand. O, how lofty are their eyes! And their eyelids are lifted up. But they shall be brought low, those children of wrath, those sons of Beelzebub. They have trusted in the blood of bulls and of goats but a nobler sacrifice is demanded. And I—I, Daniel Random—have been chosen by the Heavenly God for this high office.”
“And what are you going to sacrifice, Daniel?” inquired Amanda, still easily, as she threaded her needle. You had to humor such people, she reflected. But he really ought to be shut up when these spells came on. There was no knowing what he might do. Kill somebody’s cow, as like as not.
“You—you, Amanda Page, are the appointed sacrifice,” said Daniel solemnly, taking a few steps nearer.
“O, me?” said Amanda, aroused. “I wouldn’t do at all, Daniel. I haven’t the use of my legs. You mustn’t offer up an imperfect thing to the Heavenly God, you know. That’s in the Bible, isn’t it?”
“You are not deformed and you are very beautiful, Amanda Page. The Heavenly God took the use of your legs away from you because you danced. That was an offence to the Heavenly God.”
“You used to dance yourself, Daniel, if I remember aright,” retorted Amanda. His burning eyes were beginning to make her a little uncomfortable but she smiled over the recollection of Daniel Random leaping and shouting furiously as he danced an eight-hand reel at a party in Lower Bartibog years ago.
“I did, I did,” said Daniel wildly. “That was how I lost my soul: I danced it away. Danced it to damnation. But it is not yet too late. I have got a word from the Heavenly God. To-day he spoke to me and I have seen the light. I have been waiting for a sign and lo, it is here.”
He was quite close to her by this time and Amanda felt a sudden stab of fear. She had never heard of him being so bad as this.
“Don’t you touch me. Don’t you dare touch me, Daniel Random,” she said sharply, trying to keep her voice steady. It did not do to let lunatics see that you were afraid of them. And this man was clearly mad! Not “off” or “cracked” or “goofy,” but simply mad.
Daniel laid a bony hand, with long and very dirty nails, on her smooth, plump arm. There was a certain horrible gloating in his touch.
“I shall not speak smooth things to you, Amanda Page,” he said sternly. “High and lifted up you have always been, proud of your long hair and your eyes that bewitch the hearts of men. But your hour is come. Prepare to meet the Heavenly God. I will wash my hands in your blood…it will be a glorious experience, O, my sister. The parched ground shall become a pool and Daniel Random, priest of the Heavenly God, shall find his soul.”
“You’d better run away home, Daniel,” said Amanda faintly, when his ridiculous farrago of phrases and tags had eased temporarily for want of breath. “I’m very tired…and I always take a nap in the afternoon.”
For all answer Daniel picked her up as if she were a child. Amanda tried desperately to free herself but he had her arms imprisoned between their bodies and she could not get them loose. O, if she could only kick him! Faugh, what a terrible breath he had! Was this a nightmare?
“Blue and purple and scarlet and fine-twined linen!” shouted Daniel, suddenly exultant, as her chiffon scarf blew across her face in a sudden gust of wind from the open door. “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh…ay. He shall laugh!”
Daniel laughed himself, horribly. He lifted Amanda high in the air for a moment, then laid her on the kitchen table, holding her down with one hand while he reached across the table with the other.
Amanda was momentarily paralyzed with horror. Her hands went clammy. This—this was one of the things you read about in books and newspapers but which could never happen in real life.
Daniel had got what he reached for: Tillie John’s old, long, wickedly thin and sharp carving knife. His burning eyes gazed into Amanda’s terrified orbs with all the irresponsible light of insanity as he raised the carving knife with both his hands gripping the handle.
Amanda knew all at once and indisputably that this madman meant to kill her. Something in her screamed although no sound passed her lips. She made one wild, convulsive spring from the table. She went out of the door and down the steps and down the lane, running as she had never run in all her life before. The use of her legs had returned with a vengeance.
Daniel was close behind her, still clutching the carving knife. In his momentary stupefaction at her unlooked-for escape he had allowed her to get the lead but he was rapidly overtaking her. Not a living soul was in sight. Amanda flew across the road, her chiffon scarf, held by the pin of her collar, streaming behind her, and down the old, disused wharf below the Page place. Eliza, escaping from pursuers and bloodhounds, had nothing on Amanda as she leaped over the gaping holes in the ragged structure to the very end where two rowboats were tied. With one final, frenzied jump Amanda landed in John’s boat. But the rope was tied in a firm knot and Daniel was already in sight. Amanda snatched up a hatchet which John had providentially left there and severed it at a blow she caught at the oars and pulled wildly. She had been a good rower ten years before and under the stress of terror and stark necessity all her old skill came back combined with the strength of desperation. For Daniel had climbed into the Harrow boat and was coming after her. It was not so very far to Lower Bartibog where the little river debouched into the harbour. And once around the point Captain Jonas’ house was near. Could she hold out? She would…she must.
Captain Jonas, standing where his lane ran out from his garden, smoking a pipe and scowling viciously at things in general, saw something. He had been all over the world and had seen all kinds of incredible things but never anything quite so incredible as this. In fact, he didn’t believe he saw it. It couldn’t be…it simply wasn’t happening. He was dreaming or drunk or crazy. Ay, that was it: crazy, as a man might well be after such a night as he had spent. Hadn’t there been a yarn that his father’s cousin’s great-aunt had been in the asylum? Those things run in families, you couldn’t deny it.
Captain Jonas saw, or thought he saw, Amanda Page—who hadn’t put a foot under her for ten years—running madly up his lane with Daniel Random one jump behind her, flourishing an implement which everybody in both the Bartibogs would have recognized as Tillie John’s favourite carving knife. Amanda was almost staggering and was uttering the most piteous little cries. Her hair had come loose and streamed madly in the wind, her cheeks were whipped to a brilliant scarlet, her blue dress was spattered from head to foot with mud and her red bedroom slippers would never be the same again.
“Jonas…save me…save me…” she gasped, as he ran to catch her.
Captain Jonas had already decided that he was not crazy—after all, that great-aunt had been on the cousin’s mother’s side—but only dreaming. Still, you had to do something even in a dream. Captain Jonas dreamed that he put the shaking Amanda carefully down on a stone bench and packed Daniel Random a wicked wallop on the jaw. There was something so solid and satisfying in the impact that Captain Jonas felt a conviction that the scene was real.
Daniel sat down abruptly in the muddy lane and put a hand to his face. The carving knife had flown from his grasp over the hedge into the garden, where Captain Jonas found it next day and restored it to Tillie John who could never have cut another slice of bread in her life if she hadn’t regained it.
“What does this mean, Daniel Random?” demanded Captain Jonas.
Daniel looked about him vacantly.
“The Heavenly God—” he began.
“We’ll leave God out of this,” said Captain Jonas. “There’s evidently been a miracle and it’s probably His doing but you’re not going to take His name in vain
in your condition. I’m asking you what has happened.”
Daniel tried again.
“The Heavenly God—”
Captain Jonas lost all patience.
“Git up and git.”
Daniel Random got up and got. He was crying bitterly as he stumbled down the lane but his frenzy was over for the time being at least, as his harrowed wife thankfully realized when he arrived home in tears.
Captain Jonas turned to the disheveled, mud-splashed Amanda and gathered her up in his arms. She sobbed out a disconnected account of what had happened.
“O, Jonas, it’s been like a terrible nightmare…but it’s over…and I can walk again. O, Jonas…that English doctor must have been right…but you don’t think I was deceiving you all these years, do you? Maybe I have got a sub—sub-whatever-it-was mind.”
“My loveliest girl!” Captain Jonas tightened his grip. “You ought to know me better than that. Now, now, darling, don’t be hot and bothered any longer. He’s gone and you are safe. You’ll just come in and have a bit of supper first, before we do any more talking. Mrs. Wiggins is getting it ready…it’ll set you up.”
Amanda lifted her head from his shoulder and sniffed. A heavenly smell of fried codfish cakes and salt pork floated out on the crisp April air.
“I could do with a cup of tea,” she said. “O, Jonas…you said I’d have to come to you…and I came. It—it’s an act of God, Jonas.”
“Act of God—or act of Daniel Random—you’re going to marry me right straight off, Amanda Page.”
“Well,” sighed Amanda happily, “since I’ve got the use of my legs….”
Editors’ note: “The Use of Her Legs,” illustrated by James and Charlotte Billmyer, was published in the September 1936 issue of Canadian Home Journal. It is not listed in the 1986 bibliography but was found by Benjamin Lefebve and Donna Campbell. Lefebvre discovered that Montgomery wrote the story on the backs of the pages of her original manuscript for Jane of Lantern Hill (1937), which is kept in the Confederation Centre Archives in Charlottetown, PEI. The published story is available to view online in the Ryrie-Campbell Collection.
After Many Years Page 26
