“I will tell you in a few days,” said Rosemary, with downcast eyes and burning face.
When the door shut behind him she went back into the room and wrung her hands.
CHAPTER XXII.
ST. GEORGE KNOWS ALL ABOUT IT
At midnight Ellen West was walking home from the Pollock silver wedding. She had stayed a little while after the other guests had gone, to help the gray-haired bride wash the dishes. The distance between the two houses was not far and the road good, so that Ellen was enjoying the walk back home in the moonlight.
The evening had been a pleasant one. Ellen, who had not been to a party for years, found it very pleasant. All the guests had been members of her old set and there was no intrusive youth to spoil the flavour, for the only son of the bride and groom was far away at college and could not be present. Norman Douglas had been there and they had met socially for the first time in years, though she had seen him once or twice in church that winter. Not the least sentiment was awakened in Ellen’s heart by their meeting. She was accustomed to wonder, when she thought about it at all, how she could ever have fancied him or felt so badly over his sudden marriage. But she had rather liked meeting him again. She had forgotten how bracing and stimulating he could be. No gathering was ever stagnant when Norman Douglas was present. Everybody had been surprised when Norman came. It was well known he never went anywhere. The Pollocks had invited him because he had been one of the original guests, but they never thought he would come. He had taken his second cousin, Amy Annetta Douglas, out to supper and seemed rather attentive to her. But Ellen sat across the table from him and had a spirited argument with him — an argument during which all his shouting and banter could not fluster her and in which she came off best, flooring Norman so composedly and so completely that he was silent for ten minutes. At the end of which time he had muttered in his ruddy beard—”spunky as ever — spunky as ever” — and began to hector Amy Annetta, who giggled foolishly over his sallies where Ellen would have retorted bitingly.
Ellen thought these things over as she walked home, tasting them with reminiscent relish. The moonlit air sparkled with frost. The snow crisped under her feet. Below her lay the Glen with the white harbour beyond. There was a light in the manse study. So John Meredith had gone home. Had he asked Rosemary to marry him? And after what fashion had she made her refusal known? Ellen felt that she would never know this, though she was quite curious. She was sure Rosemary would never tell her anything about it and she would not dare to ask. She must just be content with the fact of the refusal. After all, that was the only thing that really mattered.
“I hope he’ll have sense enough to come back once in a while and be friendly,” she said to herself. She disliked so much to be alone that thinking aloud was one of her devices for circumventing unwelcome solitude. “It’s awful never to have a man-body with some brains to talk to once in a while. And like as not he’ll never come near the house again. There’s Norman Douglas, too — I like that man, and I’d like to have a good rousing argument with him now and then. But he’d never dare come up for fear people would think he was courting me again — for fear I’D think it, too, most likely — though he’s more a stranger to me now than John Meredith. It seems like a dream that we could ever have been beaus. But there it is — there’s only two men in the Glen I’d ever want to talk to — and what with gossip and this wretched love-making business it’s not likely I’ll ever see either of them again. I could,” said Ellen, addressing the unmoved stars with a spiteful emphasis, “I could have made a better world myself.”
She paused at her gate with a sudden vague feeling of alarm. There was still a light in the living-room and to and fro across the window-shades went the shadow of a woman walking restlessly up and down. What was Rosemary doing up at this hour of the night? And why was she striding about like a lunatic?
Ellen went softly in. As she opened the hall door Rosemary came out of the room. She was flushed and breathless. An atmosphere of stress and passion hung about her like a garment.
“Why aren’t you in bed, Rosemary?” demanded Ellen.
“Come in here,” said Rosemary intensely. “I want to tell you something.”
Ellen composedly removed her wraps and overshoes, and followed her sister into the warm, fire-lighted room. She stood with her hand on the table and waited. She was looking very handsome herself, in her own grim, black-browed style. The new black velvet dress, with its train and V-neck, which she had made purposely for the party, became her stately, massive figure. She wore coiled around her neck the rich heavy necklace of amber beads which was a family heirloom. Her walk in the frosty air had stung her cheeks into a glowing scarlet. But her steel-blue eyes were as icy and unyielding as the sky of the winter night. She stood waiting in a silence which Rosemary could break only by a convulsive effort.
“Ellen, Mr. Meredith was here this evening.”
“Yes?”
“And — and — he asked me to marry him.”
“So I expected. Of course, you refused him?”
“No.”
“Rosemary.” Ellen clenched her hands and took an involuntary step forward. “Do you mean to tell me that you accepted him?”
“No — no.”
Ellen recovered her self-command.
“What DID you do then?”
“I — I asked him to give me a few days to think it over.”
“I hardly see why that was necessary,” said Ellen, coldly contemptuous, “when there is only the one answer you can make him.”
Rosemary held out her hands beseechingly.
“Ellen,” she said desperately, “I love John Meredith — I want to be his wife. Will you set me free from that promise?”
“No,” said Ellen, merciless, because she was sick from fear.
“Ellen — Ellen—”
“Listen,” interrupted Ellen. “I did not ask you for that promise. You offered it.”
“I know — I know. But I did not think then that I could ever care for anyone again.”
“You offered it,” went on Ellen unmovably. “You promised it over our mother’s Bible. It was more than a promise — it was an oath. Now you want to break it.”
“I only asked you to set me free from it, Ellen.”
“I will not do it. A promise is a promise in my eyes. I will not do it. Break your promise — be forsworn if you will — but it shall not be with any assent of mine.”
“You are very hard on me, Ellen.”
“Hard on you! And what of me? Have you ever given a thought to what my loneliness would be here if you left me? I could not bear it — I would go crazy. I CANNOT live alone. Haven’t I been a good sister to you? Have I ever opposed any wish of yours? Haven’t I indulged you in everything?”
“Yes — yes.”
“Then why do you want to leave me for this man whom you hadn’t seen a year ago?”
“I love him, Ellen.”
“Love! You talk like a school miss instead of a middle-aged woman. He doesn’t love you. He wants a housekeeper and a governess. You don’t love him. You want to be ‘Mrs.’ — you are one of those weak-minded women who think it’s a disgrace to be ranked as an old maid. That’s all there is to it.”
Rosemary quivered. Ellen could not, or would not, understand.
There was no use arguing with her.
“So you won’t release me, Ellen?”
“No, I won’t. And I won’t talk of it again. You promised and you’ve got to keep your word. That’s all. Go to bed. Look at the time! You’re all romantic and worked up. To-morrow you’ll be more sensible. At any rate, don’t let me hear any more of this nonsense. Go.”
Rosemary went without another word, pale and spiritless. Ellen walked stormily about the room for a few minutes, then paused before the chair where St. George had been calmly sleeping through the whole evening. A reluctant smile overspread her dark face. There had been only one time in her life — the time of her mother’s death — when Ellen h
ad not been able to temper tragedy with comedy. Even in that long ago bitterness, when Norman Douglas had, after a fashion, jilted her, she had laughed at herself quite as often as she had cried.
“I expect there’ll be some sulking, St. George. Yes, Saint, I expect we are in for a few unpleasant foggy days. Well, we’ll weather them through, George. We’ve dealt with foolish children before, Saint. Rosemary’ll sulk a while — and then she’ll get over it — and all will be as before, George. She promised — and she’s got to keep her promise. And that’s the last word on the subject I’ll say to you or her or anyone, Saint.”
But Ellen lay savagely awake till morning.
There was no sulking, however. Rosemary was pale and quiet the next day, but beyond that Ellen could detect no difference in her. Certainly, she seemed to bear Ellen no grudge. It was stormy, so no mention was made of going to church. In the afternoon Rosemary shut herself in her room and wrote a note to John Meredith. She could not trust herself to say “no” in person. She felt quite sure that if he suspected she was saying “no” reluctantly he would not take it for an answer, and she could not face pleading or entreaty. She must make him think she cared nothing at all for him and she could do that only by letter. She wrote him the stiffest, coolest little refusal imaginable. It was barely courteous; it certainly left no loophole of hope for the boldest lover — and John Meredith was anything but that. He shrank into himself, hurt and mortified, when he read Rosemary’s letter next day in his dusty study. But under his mortification a dreadful realization presently made itself felt. He had thought he did not love Rosemary as deeply as he had loved Cecilia. Now, when he had lost her, he knew that he did. She was everything to him — everything! And he must put her out of his life completely. Even friendship was impossible now. Life stretched before him in intolerable dreariness. He must go on — there was his work — his children — but the heart had gone out of him. He sat alone all that evening in his dark, cold, comfortless study with his head bowed on his hands. Up on the hill Rosemary had a headache and went early to bed, while Ellen remarked to St. George, purring his disdain of foolish humankind, who did not know that a soft cushion was the only thing that really mattered,
“What would women do if headaches had never been invented, St.
George? But never mind, Saint. We’ll just wink the other eye
for a few weeks. I admit I don’t feel comfortable myself,
George. I feel as if I had drowned a kitten. But she promised,
Saint — and she was the one to offer it, George. Bismillah!”
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE GOOD-CONDUCT CLUB
A light rain had been falling all day — a little, delicate, beautiful spring rain, that somehow seemed to hint and whisper of mayflowers and wakening violets. The harbour and the gulf and the low-lying shore fields had been dim with pearl-gray mists. But now in the evening the rain had ceased and the mists had blown out to sea. Clouds sprinkled the sky over the harbour like little fiery roses. Beyond it the hills were dark against a spendthrift splendour of daffodil and crimson. A great silvery evening star was watching over the bar. A brisk, dancing, new-sprung wind was blowing up from Rainbow Valley, resinous with the odours of fir and damp mosses. It crooned in the old spruces around the graveyard and ruffled Faith’s splendid curls as she sat on Hezekiah Pollock’s tombstone with her arms round Mary Vance and Una. Carl and Jerry were sitting opposite them on another tombstone and all were rather full of mischief after being cooped up all day.
“The air just SHINES to-night, doesn’t it? It’s been washed so clean, you see,” said Faith happily.
Mary Vance eyed her gloomily. Knowing what she knew, or fancied she knew, Mary considered that Faith was far too light-hearted. Mary had something on her mind to say and she meant to say it before she went home. Mrs. Elliott had sent her up to the manse with some new-laid eggs, and had told her not to stay longer than half an hour. The half hour was nearly up, so Mary uncurled her cramped legs from under her and said abruptly,
“Never mind about the air. Just you listen to me. You manse young ones have just got to behave yourselves better than you’ve been doing this spring — that’s all there is to it. I just come up to-night a-purpose to tell you so. The way people are talking about you is awful.”
“What have we been doing now?” cried Faith in amazement, pulling her arm away from Mary. Una’s lips trembled and her sensitive little soul shrank within her. Mary was always so brutally frank. Jerry began to whistle out of bravado. He meant to let Mary see he didn’t care for HER tirades. Their behaviour was no business of HERS anyway. What right had SHE to lecture them on their conduct?
“Doing now! You’re doing ALL the time,” retorted Mary. “Just as soon as the talk about one of your didos fades away you do something else to start it up again. It seems to me you haven’t any idea of how manse children ought to behave!”
“Maybe YOU can tell us,” said Jerry, killingly sarcastic.
Sarcasm was quite thrown away on Mary.
“I can tell you what will happen if you don’t learn to behave yourselves. The session will ask your father to resign. There now, Master Jerry-know-it-all. Mrs. Alec Davis said so to Mrs. Elliott. I heard her. I always have my ears pricked up when Mrs. Alec Davis comes to tea. She said you were all going from bad to worse and that though it was only what was to be expected when you had nobody to bring you up, still the congregation couldn’t be expected to put up with it much longer, and something would have to be done. The Methodists just laugh and laugh at you, and that hurts the Presbyterian feelings. SHE says you all need a good dose of birch tonic. Lor’, if that would make folks good I oughter be a young saint. I’m not telling you this because I want to hurt YOUR feelings. I’m sorry for you” — Mary was past mistress of the gentle art of condescension.” I understand that you haven’t much chance, the way things are. But other people don’t make as much allowance as I do. Miss Drew says Carl had a frog in his pocket in Sunday School last Sunday and it hopped out while she was hearing the lesson. She says she’s going to give up the class. Why don’t you keep your insecks home?”
“I popped it right back in again,” said Carl. “It didn’t hurt anybody — a poor little frog! And I wish old Jane Drew WOULD give up our class. I hate her. Her own nephew had a dirty plug of tobacco in his pocket and offered us fellows a chew when Elder Clow was praying. I guess that’s worse than a frog.”
“No, ‘cause frogs are more unexpected-like. They make more of a sensation. ‘Sides, he wasn’t caught at it. And then that praying competition you had last week has made a fearful scandal. Everybody is talking about it.”
“Why, the Blythes were in that as well as us,” cried Faith, indignantly. “It was Nan Blythe who suggested it in the first place. And Walter took the prize.”
“Well, you get the credit of it any way. It wouldn’t have been so bad if you hadn’t had it in the graveyard.”
“I should think a graveyard was a very good place to pray in,” retorted Jerry.
“Deacon Hazard drove past when YOU were praying,” said Mary, “and he saw and heard you, with your hands folded over your stomach, and groaning after every sentence. He thought you were making fun of HIM.”
“So I was,” declared unabashed Jerry. “Only I didn’t know he was going by, of course. That was just a mean accident. I wasn’t praying in real earnest — I knew I had no chance of winning the prize. So I was just getting what fun I could out of it. Walter Blythe can pray bully. Why, he can pray as well as dad.”
“Una is the only one of US who really likes praying,” said Faith pensively.
“Well, if praying scandalizes people so much we mustn’t do it any more,” sighed Una.
“Shucks, you can pray all you want to, only not in the graveyard — and don’t make a game of it. That was what made it so bad — that, and having a tea-party on the tombstones.”
“We hadn’t.”
“Well, a soap-bubble party then. You had SOMETHING. The o
ver-harbour people swear you had a tea-party, but I’m willing to take your word. And you used this tombstone as a table.”
“Well, Martha wouldn’t let us blow bubbles in the house. She was awful cross that day,” explained Jerry. “And this old slab made such a jolly table.”
“Weren’t they pretty?” cried Faith, her eyes sparkling over the remembrance. “They reflected the trees and the hills and the harbour like little fairy worlds, and when we shook them loose they floated away down to Rainbow Valley.”
“All but one and it went over and bust up on the Methodist spire,” said Carl.
“I’m glad we did it once, anyhow, before we found out it was wrong,” said Faith.
“It wouldn’t have been wrong to blow them on the lawn,” said Mary impatiently. “Seems like I can’t knock any sense into your heads. You’ve been told often enough you shouldn’t play in the graveyard. The Methodists are sensitive about it.”
“We forget,” said Faith dolefully. “And the lawn is so small — and so caterpillary — and so full of shrubs and things. We can’t be in Rainbow Valley all the time — and where are we to go?”
“It’s the things you DO in the graveyard. It wouldn’t matter if you just sat here and talked quiet, same as we’re doing now. Well, I don’t know what is going to come of it all, but I DO know that Elder Warren is going to speak to your pa about it. Deacon Hazard is his cousin.”
“I wish they wouldn’t bother father about us,” said Una.
“Well, people think he ought to bother himself about you a little more. I don’t — I understand him. He’s a child in some ways himself — that’s what he is, and needs some one to look after him as bad as you do. Well, perhaps he’ll have some one before long, if all tales is true.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 178
