Walter sat at his window until bedtime. Di crept in, hoping to be told what was wrong, but Walter could not talk of it, even to Di. Talking of it seemed to give it a reality from which he shrank. It was torture enough to think of it. The crisp, withered leaves rustled on the maple trees outside his window. The glow of rose and flame had died out of the hollow, silvery sky, and the full moon was rising gloriously over Rainbow Valley. Afar off, a ruddy woodfire was painting a page of glory on the horizon beyond the hills. It was a sharp, clear evening when far-away sounds were heard distinctly. A fox was barking across the pond; an engine was puffing down at the Glen station; a blue-jay was screaming madly in the maple grove; there was laughter over on the manse lawn. How could people laugh? How could foxes and blue-jays and engines behave as if nothing were going to happen on the morrow?
“Oh, I wish it was over,” groaned Walter.
He slept very little that night and had hard work choking down his porridge in the morning. Susan WAS rather lavish in her platefuls. Mr. Hazard found him an unsatisfactory pupil that day. Faith Meredith’s wits seemed to be wool-gathering, too. Dan Reese kept drawing surreptitious pictures of girls, with pig or rooster heads, on his slate and holding them up for all to see. The news of the coming battle had leaked out and most of the boys and many of the girls were in the spruce plantation when Dan and Walter sought it after school. Una had gone home, but Faith was there, having tied her blue ribbon around Walter’s arm. Walter was thankful that neither Jem nor Di nor Nan were among the crowd of spectators. Somehow they had not heard of what was in the wind and had gone home, too. Walter faced Dan quite undauntedly now. At the last moment all his fear had vanished, but he still felt disgust at the idea of fighting. Dan, it was noted, was really paler under his freckles than Walter was. One of the older boys gave the word and Dan struck Walter in the face.
Walter reeled a little. The pain of the blow tingled through all his sensitive frame for a moment. Then he felt pain no longer. Something, such as he had never experienced before, seemed to roll over him like a flood. His face flushed crimson, his eyes burned like flame. The scholars of Glen St. Mary school had never dreamed that “Miss Walter” could look like that. He hurled himself forward and closed with Dan like a young wildcat.
There were no particular rules in the fights of the Glen school boys. It was catch-as-catch can, and get your blows in anyhow. Walter fought with a savage fury and a joy in the struggle against which Dan could not hold his ground. It was all over very speedily. Walter had no clear consciousness of what he was doing until suddenly the red mist cleared from his sight and he found himself kneeling on the body of the prostrate Dan whose nose—oh, horror!—was spouting blood.
“Have you had enough?” demanded Walter through his clenched teeth.
Dan sulkily admitted that he had.
“My mother doesn’t write lies?”
“No.”
“Faith Meredith isn’t a pig-girl?”
“No.”
“Nor a rooster-girl?”
“No.”
“And I’m not a coward?”
“No.”
Walter had intended to ask, “And you are a liar?” but pity intervened and he did not humiliate Dan further. Besides, that blood was so horrible.
“You can go, then,” he said contemptuously.
There was a loud clapping from the boys who were perched on the rail fence, but some of the girls were crying. They were frightened. They had seen schoolboy fights before, but nothing like Walter as he had grappled with Dan. There had been something terrifying about him. They thought he would kill Dan. Now that all was over they sobbed hysterically—except Faith, who still stood tense and crimson cheeked.
Walter did not stay for any conqueror’s meed. He sprang over the fence and rushed down the spruce hill to Rainbow Valley. He felt none of the victor’s joy, but he felt a certain calm satisfaction in duty done and honour avenged—mingled with a sickish qualm when he thought of Dan’s gory nose. It had been so ugly, and Walter hated ugliness.
Also, he began to realize that he himself was somewhat sore and battered up. His lip was cut and swollen and one eye felt very strange. In Rainbow Valley he encountered Mr. Meredith, who was coming home from an afternoon call on the Miss Wests. That reverend gentleman looked gravely at him.
“It seems to me that you have been fighting, Walter?”
“Yes, sir,” said Walter, expecting a scolding.
“What was it about?”
“Dan Reese said my mother wrote lies and that that Faith was a pig-girl,” answered Walter bluntly.
“Oh—h! Then you were certainly justified, Walter.”
“Do you think it’s right to fight, sir?” asked Walter curiously.
“Not always—and not often—but sometimes—yes, sometimes,” said John Meredith. “When womenkind are insulted for instance—as in your case. My motto, Walter, is, don’t fight till you’re sure you ought to, and THEN put every ounce of you into it. In spite of sundry discolorations I infer that you came off best.”
“Yes. I made him take it all back.”
“Very good—very good, indeed. I didn’t think you were such a fighter, Walter.”
“I never fought before—and I didn’t want to right up to the last—and then,” said Walter, determined to make a clean breast of it, “I liked it while I was at it.”
The Rev. John’s eyes twinkled.
“You were—a little frightened—at first?”
“I was a whole lot frightened,” said honest Walter. “But I’m not going to be frightened any more, sir. Being frightened of things is worse than the things themselves. I’m going to ask father to take me over to Lowbridge to-morrow to get my tooth out.”
“Right again. ‘Fear is more pain than is the pain it fears.’ Do you know who wrote that, Walter? It was Shakespeare. Was there any feeling or emotion or experience of the human heart that that wonderful man did not know? When you go home tell your mother I am proud of you.”
Walter did not tell her that, however; but he told her all the rest, and she sympathized with him and told him she was glad he had stood up for her and Faith, and she anointed his sore spots and rubbed cologne on his aching head.
“Are all mothers as nice as you?” asked Walter, hugging her.
“You’re WORTH standing up for.”
Miss Cornelia and Susan were in the living room when Anne came downstairs, and listened to the story with much enjoyment. Susan in particular was highly gratified.
“I am real glad to hear he has had a good fight, Mrs. Dr. dear.
Perhaps it may knock that poetry nonsense out of him. And I
never, no, never could bear that little viper of a Dan Reese.
Will you not sit nearer to the fire, Mrs. Marshall Elliott?
These November evenings are very chilly.”
“Thank you, Susan, I’m not cold. I called at the manse before I came here and got quite warm—though I had to go to the kitchen to do it, for there was no fire anywhere else. The kitchen looked as if it had been stirred up with a stick, believe ME. Mr. Meredith wasn’t home. I couldn’t find out where he was, but I have an idea that he was up at the Wests’. Do you know, Anne dearie, they say he has been going there frequently all the fall and people are beginning to think he is going to see Rosemary.”
“He would get a very charming wife if he married Rosemary,” said
Anne, piling driftwood on the fire. “She is one of the most
delightful girls I’ve ever known—truly one of the race of
Joseph.”
“Ye—s—only she is an Episcopalian,” said Miss Cornelia doubtfully. “Of course, that is better than if she was a Methodist—but I do think Mr. Meredith could find a good enough wife in his own denomination. However, very likely there is nothing in it. It’s only a month ago that I said to him, ‘You ough
t to marry again, Mr. Meredith.’ He looked as shocked as if I had suggested something improper. ‘My wife is in her grave, Mrs. Elliott,’ he said, in that gentle, saintly way of his. ‘I suppose so,’ I said, ‘or I wouldn’t be advising you to marry again.’ Then he looked more shocked than ever. So I doubt if there is much in this Rosemary story. If a single minister calls twice at a house where there is a single woman all the gossips have it he is courting her.”
“It seems to me—if I may presume to say so—that Mr. Meredith is too shy to go courting a second wife,” said Susan solemnly.
“He ISN’T shy, believe ME,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “Absent-minded,—yes—but shy, no. And for all he is so abstracted and dreamy he has a very good opinion of himself, man-like, and when he is really awake he wouldn’t think it much of a chore to ask any woman to have him. No, the trouble is, he’s deluding himself into believing that his heart is buried, while all the time it’s beating away inside of him just like anybody else’s. He may have a notion of Rosemary West and he may not. If he has, we must make the best of it. She is a sweet girl and a fine housekeeper, and would make a good mother for those poor, neglected children. And,” concluded Miss Cornelia resignedly, “my own grandmother was an Episcopalian.”
CHAPTER XVIII. MARY BRINGS EVIL TIDINGS
Mary Vance, whom Mrs. Elliott had sent up to the manse on an errand, came tripping down Rainbow Valley on her way to Ingleside where she was to spend the afternoon with Nan and Di as a Saturday treat. Nan and Di had been picking spruce gum with Faith and Una in the manse woods and the four of them were now sitting on a fallen pine by the brook, all, it must be admitted, chewing rather vigorously. The Ingleside twins were not allowed to chew spruce gum anywhere but in the seclusion of Rainbow Valley, but Faith and Una were unrestricted by such rules of etiquette and cheerfully chewed it everywhere, at home and abroad, to the very proper horror of the Glen. Faith had been chewing it in church one day; but Jerry had realized the enormity of THAT, and had given her such an older-brotherly scolding that she never did it again.
“I was so hungry I just felt as if I had to chew something,” she protested. “You know well enough what breakfast was like, Jerry Meredith. I COULDN’T eat scorched porridge and my stomach just felt so queer and empty. The gum helped a lot—and I didn’t chew VERY hard. I didn’t make any noise and I never cracked the gum once.”
“You mustn’t chew gum in church, anyhow,” insisted Jerry. “Don’t let me catch you at it again.”
“You chewed yourself in prayer-meeting last week,” cried Faith.
“THAT’S different,” said Jerry loftily. “Prayer-meeting isn’t on Sunday. Besides, I sat away at the back in a dark seat and nobody saw me. You were sitting right up front where every one saw you. And I took the gum out of my mouth for the last hymn and stuck it on the back of the pew right up in front where every one saw you. And I took the gum out of my mouth for the last hymn and stuck it on the back of the pew in front of me. Then I came away and forgot it. I went back to get it next morning, but it was gone. I suppose Rod Warren swiped it. And it was a dandy chew.”
Mary Vance walked down the Valley with her head held high. She had on a new blue velvet cap with a scarlet rosette in it, a coat of navy blue cloth and a little squirrel-fur muff. She was very conscious of her new clothes and very well pleased with herself. Her hair was elaborately crimped, her face was quite plump, her cheeks rosy, her white eyes shining. She did not look much like the forlorn and ragged waif the Merediths had found in the old Taylor barn. Una tried not to feel envious. Here was Mary with a new velvet cap, but she and Faith had to wear their shabby old gray tams again this winter. Nobody ever thought of getting them new ones and they were afraid to ask their father for them for fear that he might be short of money and then he would feel badly. Mary had told them once that ministers were always short of money, and found it “awful hard” to make ends meet. Since then Faith and Una would have gone in rags rather than ask their father for anything if they could help it. They did not worry a great deal over their shabbiness; but it was rather trying to see Mary Vance coming out in such style and putting on such airs about it, too. The new squirrel muff was really the last straw. Neither Faith nor Una had ever had a muff, counting themselves lucky if they could compass mittens without holes in them. Aunt Martha could not see to darn holes and though Una tried to, she made sad cobbling. Somehow, they could not make their greeting of Mary very cordial. But Mary did not mind or notice that; she was not overly sensitive. She vaulted lightly to a seat on the pine tree, and laid the offending muff on a bough. Una saw that it was lined with shirred red satin and had red tassels. She looked down at her own rather purple, chapped, little hands and wondered if she would ever, EVER be able to put them into a muff like that.
“Give us a chew,” said Mary companionably. Nan, Di and Faith all produced an amber-hued knot or two from their pockets and passed them to Mary. Una sat very still. She had four lovely big knots in the pocket of her tight, thread-bare little jacket, but she wasn’t going to give one of them to Mary Vance—not one Let Mary pick her own gum! People with squirrel muffs needn’t expect to get everything in the world.
“Great day, isn’t it?” said Mary, swinging her legs, the better, perhaps, to display new boots with very smart cloth tops. Una tucked HER feet under her. There was a hole in the toe of one of her boots and both laces were much knotted. But they were the best she had. Oh, this Mary Vance! Why hadn’t they left her in the old barn?
Una never felt badly because the Ingleside twins were better dressed than she and Faith were. THEY wore their pretty clothes with careless grace and never seemed to think about them at all. Somehow, they did not make other people feel shabby. But when Mary Vance was dressed up she seemed fairly to exude clothes—to walk in an atmosphere of clothes—to make everybody else feel and think clothes. Una, as she sat there in the honey-tinted sunshine of the gracious December afternoon, was acutely and miserably conscious of everything she had on—the faded tam, which was yet her best, the skimpy jacket she had worn for three winters, the holes in her skirt and her boots, the shivering insufficiency of her poor little undergarments. Of course, Mary was going out for a visit and she was not. But even if she had been she had nothing better to put on and in this lay the sting.
“Say, this is great gum. Listen to me cracking it. There ain’t any gum spruces down at Four Winds,” said Mary. “Sometimes I just hanker after a chew. Mrs. Elliott won’t let me chew gum if she sees me. She says it ain’t lady-like. This lady-business puzzles me. I can’t get on to all its kinks. Say, Una, what’s the matter with you? Cat got your tongue?”
“No,” said Una, who could not drag her fascinated eyes from that squirrel muff. Mary leaned past her, picked it up and thrust it into Una’s hands.
“Stick your paws in that for a while,” she ordered. “They look sorter pinched. Ain’t that a dandy muff? Mrs. Elliott give it to me last week for a birthday present. I’m to get the collar at Christmas. I heard her telling Mr. Elliott that.”
“Mrs. Elliott is very good to you,” said Faith.
“You bet she is. And I’M good to her, too,” retorted Mary. “I work like a nigger to make it easy for her and have everything just as she likes it. We was made for each other. ‘Tisn’t every one could get along with her as well as I do. She’s pizen neat, but so am I, and so we agree fine.”
“I told you she would never whip you.”
“So you did. She’s never tried to lay a finger on me and I ain’t never told a lie to her—not one, true’s you live. She combs me down with her tongue sometimes though, but that just slips off ME like water off a duck’s back. Say, Una, why didn’t you hang on to the muff?”
Una had put it back on the bough.
“My hands aren’t cold, thank you,” she said stiffly.
“Well, if you’re satisfied, I am. Say, old Kitty Alec has come back to church as meek as Moses and nobody kno
ws why. But everybody is saying it was Faith brought Norman Douglas out. His housekeeper says you went there and gave him an awful tongue-lashing. Did you?”
“I went and asked him to come to church,” said Faith uncomfortably.
“Fancy your spunk!” said Mary admiringly. “I wouldn’t have dared do that and I’m not so slow. Mrs. Wilson says the two of you jawed something scandalous, but you come off best and then he just turned round and like to eat you up. Say, is your father going to preach here to-morrow?”
“No. He’s going to exchange with Mr. Perry from Charlottetown. Father went to town this morning and Mr. Perry is coming out to-night.”
“I THOUGHT there was something in the wind, though old Martha wouldn’t give me any satisfaction. But I felt sure she wouldn’t have been killing that rooster for nothing.”
“What rooster? What do you mean?” cried Faith, turning pale.
“I don’t know what rooster. I didn’t see it. When she took the butter Mrs. Elliott sent up she said she’d been out to the barn killing a rooster for dinner tomorrow.”
Faith sprang down from the pine.
“It’s Adam—we have no other rooster—she has killed Adam.”
“Now, don’t fly off the handle. Martha said the butcher at the Glen had no meat this week and she had to have something and the hens were all laying and too poor.”
“If she has killed Adam—” Faith began to run up the hill.
Mary shrugged her shoulders.
“She’ll go crazy now. She was so fond of that Adam. He ought to have been in the pot long ago—he’ll be as tough as sole leather. But I wouldn’t like to be in Martha’s shoes. Faith’s just white with rage; Una, you’d better go after her and try to peacify her.”
Mary had gone a few steps with the Blythe girls when Una suddenly turned and ran after her.
“Here’s some gum for you, Mary,” she said, with a little repentant catch in her voice, thrusting all her four knots into Mary’s hands, “and I’m glad you have such a pretty muff.”
The Classic Children's Literature Collection: 39 Classic Novels Page 430
