When they came in sight of Four Winds they saw two people walking up the road from the harbour and a few further steps brought them face to face with Captain Anthony Oliver and his old housekeeper.
The Captain’s appearance was a fresh surprise to Alan. He had expected to meet a rough, burly sailor, loud of voice and forbidding of manner. Instead, Captain Anthony was a tall, well-built man of perhaps fifty. His face, beneath its shock of iron-grey hair, was handsome but wore a somewhat forbidding expression, and there was something in it, apart from line or feature, which did not please Alan. He had no time to analyze this impression, for Lynde said hurriedly, “Father, this is Mr. Douglas. He has just done me a great service.”
She briefly explained her accident; when she had finished, the Captain turned to Alan and held out his hand, a frank smile replacing the rather suspicious and contemptuous scowl which had previously overshadowed it.
“I am much obliged to you, Mr. Douglas,” he said cordially. “You must come up to the house and let me thank you at leisure. As a rule I’m not very partial to the cloth, as you may have heard. In this case it is the man, not the minister, I invite.”
The front door of Four Winds opened directly into a wide, low-ceilinged living room, furnished with simplicity and good taste. Leaving the two men there, Lynde and the old cousin vanished, and Alan found himself talking freely with the Captain who could, as it appeared, talk well on many subjects far removed from Four Winds. He was evidently a clever, self-educated man, somewhat opinionated and given to sarcasm; he never made any references to his own past life or experiences, but Alan discovered him to be surprisingly well read in politics and science. Sometimes in the pauses of the conversation Alan found the older man looking at him in a furtive way he did not like, but the Captain was such an improvement on what he had been led to expect that he was not inclined to be over critical. At least, this was what he honestly thought. He did not suspect that it was because this man was Lynde’s father that he wished to think as well as possible of him.
Presently Lynde came in. She had changed her outdoor dress, stained with moss and soil in her fall, for a soft clinging garment of some pale yellow material, and her long, thick braid of hair hung over her shoulder. She sat mutely down in a dim corner and took no part in the conversation except to answer briefly the remarks which Alan addressed to her. Emily came in and lighted the lamp on the table. She was as grim and unsmiling as ever, yet she cast a look of satisfaction on Alan as she passed out. One dog lay down at Lynde’s feet, the other sat on his haunches by her side and laid his head on her lap. Rexton and its quiet round of parish duties seemed thousands of miles away from Alan, and he wondered a little if this were not all a dream.
When he went away the Captain invited him back.
“If you like to come, that is,” he said brusquely, “and always as the man, not the priest, remember. I don’t want you by and by to be slyly slipping in the thin end of any professional wedges. You’ll waste your time if you do. Come as man to man and you’ll be welcome, for I like you — and it’s few men I like. But don’t try to talk religion to me.”
“I never talk religion,” said Alan emphatically. “I try to live it. I’ll not come to your house as a self-appointed missionary, sir, but I shall certainly act and speak at all times as my conscience and my reverence for my vocation demands. If I respect your beliefs, whatever they may be, I shall expect you to respect mine, Captain Oliver.”
“Oh, I won’t insult your God,” said the Captain with a faint sneer.
Alan went home in a tumult of contending feelings. He did not altogether like Captain Anthony — that was very clear to him, and yet there was something about the man that attracted him. Intellectually he was a worthy foeman, and Alan had often longed for such since coming to Rexton. He missed the keen, stimulating debates of his college days and, now there seemed a chance of renewing them, he was eager to grasp it. And Lynde — how beautiful she was! What though she shared — as was not unlikely — in her father’s lack of belief? She could not be essentially irreligious — that were impossible in a true woman. Might not this be his opportunity to help her — to lead her into dearer light? Alan Douglas was a sincere man, with himself as well as with others, yet there are some motives that lie, in their first inception, too deep even for the probe of self-analysis. He had not as yet the faintest suspicion as to the real source of his interest in Lynde Oliver — in his sudden forceful desire to be of use and service to her — to rescue her from spiritual peril as he had that day rescued her from bodily danger.
She must have a lonely, unsatisfying life, he thought. It is my duty to help her if I can.
It did not then occur to him that duty in this instance wore a much more pleasing aspect than it had sometimes worn in his experience.
Alan did not mean to be oversoon in going back to Four Winds, but three days later a book came to him which Captain Anthony had expressed a wish to see. It furnished an excuse for an earlier call. After that he went often. He always found the Captain courteous and affable, old Emily grimly cordial, Lynde sometimes remote and demure, sometimes frankly friendly. Occasionally, when the Captain was away in his yacht, he went for a walk with her and her dogs along the shore or through the sweet-smelling pinelands up the lake. He found that she loved books and was avid for more of them than she could obtain; he was glad to take her several and discuss them with her. She liked history and travels best. With novels she had no patience, she said disdainfully. She seldom spoke of herself or her past life and Alan fancied she avoided any personal reference. But once she said abruptly, “Why do you never ask me to go to church? I’ve always been afraid you would.”
“Because I do not think it would do you any good to go if you didn’t want to,” said Alan gravely. “Souls should not be rudely handled any more than bodies.”
She looked at him reflectively, her finger denting her chin in a meditative fashion she had.
“You are not at all like Mr. Strong. He always scolded me, when he got a chance, for not going to church. I would have hated him if it had been worthwhile. I told him one day that I was nearer to God under these pines than I could be in any building fashioned by human hands. He was very much shocked. But I don’t want you to misunderstand me. Father does not go to church because he does not believe there is a God. But I know there is. Mother taught me so. I have never gone to church because Father would not allow me, and I could not go now in Rexton where the people talk about me so. Oh, I know they do — you know it, too — but I do not care for them. I know I’m not like other girls. I would like to be but I can’t be — I never can be — now.”
There was some strange passion in her voice that Alan did not quite understand — a bitterness and a revolt which he took to be against the circumstances that hedged her in.
“Is not some other life possible for you if your present life does not content you?” he said gently.
“But it does content me,” said Lynde imperiously. “I want no other — I wish this life to go on forever — forever, do you understand? If I were sure that it would — if I were sure that no change would ever come to me, I would be perfectly content. It is the fear that a change will come that makes me wretched. Oh!” She shuddered and put her hands over her eyes.
Alan thought she must mean that when her father died she would be alone in the world. He wanted to comfort her — reassure her — but he did not know how.
One evening when he went to Four Winds he found the door open and, seeing the Captain in the living room, he stepped in unannounced. Captain Anthony was sitting by the table, his head in his hands; at Alan’s entrance he turned upon him a haggard face, blackened by a furious scowl beneath which blazed eyes full of malevolence.
“What do you want here?” he said, following up the demand with a string of vile oaths.
Before Alan could summon his scattered wits, Lynde glided in with a white, appealing face. Wordlessly she grasped Alan’s arm, drew him out, and shut the door.
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br /> “Oh, I’ve been watching for you,” she said breathlessly. “I was afraid you might come tonight — but I missed you.”
“But your father?” said Alan in amazement. “How have I angered him?”
“Hush. Come into the garden. I will explain there.”
He followed her into the little enclosure where the red and white roses were now in full blow.
“Father isn’t angry with you,” said Lynde in a low shamed voice. “It’s just — he takes strange moods sometimes. Then he seems to hate us all — even me — and he is like that for days. He seems to suspect and dread everybody as if they were plotting against him. You — perhaps you think he has been drinking? No, that is not the trouble. These terrible moods come on without any cause that we know of. Even Mother could not do anything with him when he was like that. You must go away now — and do not come back until his dark mood has passed. He will be just as glad to see you as ever then, and this will not make any difference with him. Don’t come back for a week at least.”
“I do not like to leave you in such trouble, Miss Oliver.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter about me — I have Emily. And there is nothing you could do. Please go at once. Father knows I am talking to you and that will vex him still more.”
Alan, realizing that he could not help her and that his presence only made matters worse, went away perplexedly. The following week was a miserable one for him. His duties were distasteful to him and meeting his people a positive torture. Sometimes Mrs. Danby looked dubiously at him and seemed on the point of saying something — but never said it. Isabel King watched him when they met, with bold probing eyes. In his abstraction he did not notice this any more than he noticed a certain subtle change which had come over the members of his congregation — as if a breath of suspicion had blown across them and troubled their confidence and trust. Once Alan would have been keenly and instantly conscious of this slight chill; now he was not even aware of it.
When he ventured to go back to Four Winds he found the Captain on the point of starting off for a cruise in his yacht. He was urbane and friendly, utterly ignoring the incident of Alan’s last visit and regretting that business compelled him to go down the lake. Alan saw him off with small regret and turned joyfully to Lynde, who was walking under the pines with her dogs. She looked pale and tired and her eyes were still troubled, but she smiled proudly and made no reference to what had happened.
“I’m going to put these flowers on Mother’s grave,” she said, lifting her slender hands filled with late white roses. “Mother loved flowers and I always keep them near her when I can. You may come with me if you like.”
Alan had known Lynde’s mother was buried under the pines but he had never visited the spot before. The grave was at the westernmost end of the pine wood, where it gave out on the lake, a beautiful spot, given over to silence and shadow.
“Mother wished to be buried here,” Lynde said, kneeling to arrange her flowers. “Father would have taken her anywhere but she said she wanted to be near us and near the lake she had loved so well. Father buried her himself. He wouldn’t have anyone else do anything for her. I am so glad she is here. It would have been terrible to have seen her taken far away — my sweet little mother.”
“A mother is the best thing in the world — I realized that when I lost mine,” said Alan gently. “How long is it since your mother died?”
“Three years. Oh, I thought I should die too when she did. She was very ill — she was never strong, you know — but I never thought she could die. There was a year then — part of the time I didn’t believe in God at all and the rest I hated Him. I was very wicked but I was so unhappy. Father had so many dreadful moods and — there was something else. I used to wish to die.”
She bowed her head on her hands and gazed moodily on the ground. Alan, leaning against a pine tree, looked down at her. The sunlight fell through the swaying boughs on her glory of burnished hair and lighted up the curve of cheek and chin against the dark background of wood brown. All the defiance and wildness had gone from her for the time and she seemed like a helpless, weary child. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her.
“You must resemble your mother,” he said absently, as if thinking aloud. “You don’t look at all like your father.”
Lynde shook her head.
“No, I don’t look like Mother either. She was tiny and dark — she had a sweet little face and velvet-brown eyes and soft curly dark hair. Oh, I remember her look so well. I wish I did resemble her. I loved her so — I would have done anything to save her suffering and trouble. At least, she died in peace.”
There was a curious note of fierce self-gratulation in the girl’s voice as she spoke the last sentence. Again Alan felt the unpleasant impression that there was much in her that he did not understand — might never understand — although such understanding was necessary to perfect friendship. She had never spoken so freely of her past life to him before, yet he felt somehow that something was being kept back in jealous repression. It must be something connected with her father, Alan thought. Doubtless, Captain Anthony’s past would not bear inspection, and his daughter knew it and dwelt in the shadow of her knowledge. His heart filled with aching pity for her; he raged secretly because he was so powerless to help her. Her girlhood had been blighted, robbed of its meed of happiness and joy. Was she likewise to miss her womanhood? Alan’s hands clenched involuntarily at the unuttered question.
On his way home that evening he again met Isabel King. She turned and walked back with him but she made no reference to Four Winds or its inhabitants. If Alan had troubled himself to look, he would have seen a malicious glow in her baleful brown eyes. But the only eyes which had any meaning for him just then were the grey ones of Lynde Oliver.
During Alan’s next three visits to Four Winds he saw nothing of Lynde, either in the house or out of it. This surprised and worried him. There was no apparent difference in Captain Anthony, who continued to be suave and friendly. Alan always enjoyed his conversations with the Captain, who was witty, incisive, and pungent; yet he disliked the man himself more at every visit. If he had been compelled to define his impression, he would have said the Captain was a charming scoundrel.
But it occurred to him that Emily was disturbed about something. Sometimes he caught her glance, full of perplexity and — it almost seemed — distrust. She looked as if she felt hostile towards him. But Alan dismissed the idea as absurd. She had been friendly from the first and he had done nothing to excite her disapproval. Lynde’s mysterious absence was a far more perplexing problem. She had not gone away, for when Alan asked the Captain concerning her, he responded indifferently that she was out walking. Alan caught a glint of amusement in the older man’s eyes as he spoke. He could have sworn it was malicious amusement.
One evening he went to Four Winds around the shore. As he turned the headland of the cove, he saw Lynde and her dogs not a hundred feet away. The moment she saw him she darted up the bank and disappeared among the firs.
Alan was thunderstruck. There was no room for doubt that she meant to avoid him. He walked up to the house in a tumult of mingled feelings which he did not even then understand. He only realized that he felt bitterly hurt and grieved — puzzled as well. What did it all mean?
He met Emily in the yard of Four Winds on her way to the spring and stopped her resolutely.
“Miss Oliver,” he said bluntly, “is Miss Lynde angry with me? And why?”
Emily looked at him piercingly.
“Have you no idea why?” she asked shortly.
“None in the world.”
She looked at him through and through a moment longer. Then, seeming satisfied with her scrutiny, she picked up her pail.
“Come down to the spring with me,” she said.
As soon as they were out of sight of the house, Emily began abruptly.
“If you don’t know why Lynde is acting so, I can’t tell you, for I don’t know either. I don’t even know
if she is angry. I only thought perhaps she was — that you had done or said something to vex her — plaguing her to go to church maybe. But if you didn’t, it may not be anger at all. I don’t understand that girl. She’s been different ever since her mother died. She used to tell me everything before that. You must go and ask her right out yourself what is wrong. But maybe I can tell you something. Did you write her a letter a fortnight ago?”
“A letter? No.”
“Well, she got one then. I thought it came from you — I didn’t know who else would be writing to her. A boy brought it and gave it to her at the door. She’s been acting strange ever since. She cries at night — something Lynde never did before except when her mother died. And in daytime she roams the shore and woods like one possessed. You must find out what was in that letter, Mr. Douglas.”
“Have you any idea who the boy was?” Alan asked, feeling somewhat relieved. The mystery was clearing up, he thought. No doubt it was the old story of some cowardly anonymous letter. His thoughts flew involuntarily to Isabel King.
Emily shook her head.
“No. He was just a half-grown fellow with reddish hair and he limped a little.”
“Oh, that is the postmaster’s son,” said Alan disappointedly. “That puts us further off the scent than ever. The letter was probably dropped in the box at the office and there will consequently be no way of tracing the writer.”
“Well, I can’t tell you anything more,” said Emily. “You’ll have to ask Lynde for the truth.”
This Alan was determined to do whenever he should meet her. He did not go to the house with Emily but wandered about the shore, watching for Lynde and not seeing her. At length he went home, a prey to stormy emotions. He realized at last that he loved Lynde Oliver. He wondered how he could have been so long blind to it. He knew that he must have loved her ever since he had first seen her. The discovery amazed but did not shock him. There was no reason why he should not love her — should not woo and win her for his wife if she cared for him. She was good and sweet and true. Anything of doubt in her antecedents could not touch her. Probably the world would look upon Captain Anthony as a somewhat undesirable father-in-law for a minister, but that aspect of the question did not disturb Alan. As for the trouble of the letter, he felt sure he would easily be able to clear it away. Probably some malicious busybody had become aware of his frequent calls at Four Winds and chose to interfere in his private affairs thus. For the first time it occurred to him that there had been a certain lack of cordiality among his people of late. If it were really so, doubtless this was the reason. At any other time this would have been of moment to him. But now his thoughts were too wholly taken up with Lynde and the estrangement on her part to attach much importance to anything else. What she thought mattered incalculably more to Alan than what all the people in Rexton put together thought. He had the right, like any other man, to woo the woman of his choice and he would certainly brook no outside interference in the matter.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 694
