If this had been said to Roger he would have retorted that it was worthwhile to have lived long enough to feel what he was feeling now. He would not have missed it for a score of other men’s lives. He had drunk of some immortal wine and was as a god. Even if she never came again, he had seen her once, and she had taught him life’s great secret in that one unforgettable exchange of eyes. She was his — his in spite of his ugliness and his crooked shoulder. No man could ever take her from him.
But she did come again. One evening, when the darkening grove was full of magic in the light of the rising yellow moon shining across the level field, Roger sat on the big boulder by the grave. The evening was very still; there was no sound save the echoes of noisy laughter that seemed to come up from the bay shore — drunken fishermen, likely as not. Roger resented the intrusion of such a sound in such a place — it was a sacrilege. When he came here to dream of her, only the loveliest of muted sounds should be heard — the faintest whisper of trees, the half-heard, half-felt moan of surf, the airiest sigh of wind. He never read Wordsworth now or any other book. He only sat there and thought of her, his great eyes alight, his pale face flushed with the wonder of his love.
She slipped through the dark boughs like a moonbeam and stood by the stone. Again he saw her quite plainly — saw and drank her in with his eyes. He did not feel surprise — something in him had known she would come again. He would not move a muscle lest he lose her as he had lost her before. They looked at each other — for how long? He did not know; and then — a horrible thing happened. Into that place of wonder and revelation and mystery reeled a hiccoughing, laughing creature, a drunken sailor from a harbour ship, with a leering face and desecrating breath.
“Oh, you’re here, my dear — I thought I’d catch you yet,” he said.
He caught hold of her. She screamed. Roger sprang forward and struck him in the face. In his fury of sudden rage the strength of ten seemed to animate his slender body and pass into his blow. The sailor reeled back and put up his hands. He was a coward — and even a brave man might have been daunted by that terrible white face and those blazing eyes. He backed down the path.
“Shorry — shorry,” he muttered. “Didn’t know she was your girl — shorry I butted in. Shentlemans never butt in — shorry — shir — shorry.”
He kept repeating his ridiculous “shorry” until he was out of the grove. Then he turned and ran stumblingly across the field. Roger did not follow; he went back to Isabel Temple’s grave. The girl was lying across it; he thought she was unconscious. He stooped and picked her up — she was light and small, but she was warm flesh and blood; she clung uncertainly to him for a moment and he felt her breath on his face. He did not speak — he was too sick at heart. She did not speak either. He did not think this strange until afterwards. He was incapable of thinking just then; he was dazed, wretched, lost. Presently he became aware that she was timidly pulling his arm. It seemed that she wanted him to go with her — she was evidently frightened of that brute — he must take her to safety. And then —
She moved on down the little path and he followed. Out in the moonlit field he saw her clearly. With her drooping head, her flowing dark hair, her great brown eyes, she looked like the nymph of a wood-brook, a haunter of shadows, a creature sprung from the wild. But she was mortal maid, and he — what a fool he had been! Presently he would laugh at himself, when this dazed agony should clear away from his brain. He followed her down the long field to the bay shore. Now and then she paused and looked back to see if he were coming, but she never spoke. When she reached the shore road she turned and went along it until they came to an old grey house fronting the calm grey harbour. At its gate she paused. Roger knew now who she was. Catherine had told him about her a month ago.
She was Lilith Barr, a girl of eighteen, who had come to live with her uncle and aunt. Her father had died some months before. She was absolutely deaf as the result of some accident in childhood, and she was, as his own eyes told him, exquisitely lovely in her white, haunting style. But she was not Isabel Temple; he had tricked himself — he had lived in a fool’s paradise — oh, he must get away and laugh at himself. He left her at her gate, disregarding the little hand she put timidly out — but he did not laugh at himself. He went back to Isabel Temple’s grave and flung himself down on it and cried like a boy. He wept his stormy, anguished soul out on it; and when he rose and went away, he believed it was forever. He thought he could never, never go there again.
Catherine looked at him curiously the next morning. He looked wretched — haggard and hollow-eyed. She knew he had not come in till the summer dawn. But he had lost the rapt, uncanny look she hated; suddenly she no longer felt afraid of him. With this, she began to ask questions again.
“What kept ye out so late again last night, b’y?” she said reproachfully.
Roger looked at her in her morning ugliness. He had not really seen her for weeks. Now she smote on his tortured senses, so long drugged with beauty, like a physical blow. He suddenly burst into a laughter that frightened her.
“Preserve’s, b’y, have ye gone mad? Or,” she added, “have ye seen Isabel Temple’s ghost?”
“No,” said Roger loudly and explosively. “Don’t talk any more about that damned ghost. Nobody ever saw it. The whole story is balderdash.”
He got up and went violently out, leaving Catherine aghast. Was it possible Roger had sworn? What on earth had come over the b’y? But come what had or come what would, he no longer looked fey — there was that much to be thankful for. Even an occasional oath was better than that. Catherine went stiffly about her dish-washing, resolving to have ‘Liza Adams to supper some night.
For a week Roger lived in agony — an agony of shame and humiliation and self-contempt. Then, when the edge of his bitter disappointment wore away, he made another dreadful discovery. He still loved her and longed for her just as keenly as before. He wanted madly to see her — her flower-like face, her great, asking eyes, the sleek, braided flow of her hair. Ghost or woman — spirit or flesh — it mattered not. He could not live without her. At last his hunger for her drew him to the old grey house on the bay shore. He knew he was a fool — she would never look at him; he was only feeding the flame that must consume him. But go he must and did, seeking for his lost paradise.
He did not see her when he went in, but Mrs. Barr received him kindly and talked about her in a pleasant garrulous fashion which jarred on Roger, yet he listened greedily. Lilith, her aunt told him, had been made deaf by the accidental explosion of a gun when she was eight years old. She could not hear a sound but she could talk.
“A little, that is — not much, but enough to get along with. But she don’t like talking somehow — dunno why. She’s shy — and we think maybe she don’t like to talk much because she can’t hear her own voice. She don’t ever speak except just when she has to. But she’s been trained to lip-reading something wonderful — she can understand anything that’s said when she can see the person that’s talking. Still, it’s a terrible drawback for the poor child — she’s never had any real girl-life and she’s dreadful sensitive and retiring. We can’t get her to go out anywhere, only for lonely walks along shore by herself. We’re much obliged for what you did the other night. It ain’t safe for her to wander about alone as she does, but it ain’t often anybody from the harbour gets up this far. She was dreadful upset about it — hasn’t got over her scare yet.”
When Lilith came in, her ivory-white face went scarlet all over at the sight of Roger. She sat down in a shadowy corner. Mrs. Barr got up and went out. Roger was mute; he could find nothing to say. He could have talked glibly enough to Isabel Temple’s ghost in some unearthly tryst by her grave, but he could not find a word to say to this slip of flesh and blood. He felt very foolish and absurd, and very conscious of his twisted shoulder. What a fool he had been to come!
Then Lilith looked up at him — and smiled. A little shy, friendly smile. Roger suddenly saw her not as the tantalizing, unrea
l, mystic thing of the twilit grove, but as a little human creature, exquisitely pretty in her young-moon beauty, longing for companionship. He got up, forgetting his ugliness, and went across the room to her.
“Will you come for a walk,” he said eagerly. He held out his hand like a child; as a child she stood up and took it; like two children they went out and down the sunset shore. Roger was again incredibly happy. It was not the same happiness as had been his in that vanished fortnight; it was a homelier happiness with its feet on the earth. The amazing thing was that he felt she was happy too — happy because she was walking with him, “Jarback” Temple, whom no girl had even thought about. A certain secret well-spring of fancy that had seemed dry welled up in him sparklingly again.
Through the summer weeks the odd courtship went on. Roger talked to her as he had never talked to anyone. He did not find it in the least hard to talk to her, though her necessity of watching his face so closely while he talked bothered him occasionally. He felt that her intent gaze was reading his soul as well as his lips. She never talked much herself; what she did say she spoke so low that it was hardly above a whisper, but she had a voice as lovely as her face — sweet, cadenced, haunting. Roger was quite mad about her, and he was horribly afraid that he could never get up enough courage to ask her to marry him. And he was afraid that if he did, she would never consent. In spite of her shy, eager welcomes he could not believe she could care for him — for him. She liked him, she was sorry for him, but it was unthinkable that she, white, exquisite Lilith, could marry him and sit at his table and his hearth. He was a fool to dream of it.
To the existence of romance and glamour in which he lived, no gossip of the countryside penetrated. Yet much gossip there was, and at last it came blundering in on Roger to destroy his fairy world a second time. He came downstairs one night in the twilight, ready to go to Lilith. His aunt and an old crony were talking in the kitchen; the crony was old, and Catherine, supposing Roger was out of the house, was talking loudly in that horrible voice of hers with still more horrible zest and satisfaction.
“Yes, I’m guessing it’ll be a match as ye say. Oh the b’y’s doing well. He ain’t for every market, as I’m bound to admit. Ef she wan’t deaf she wouldn’t look at him, no doubt. But she has scads of money — they won’t need to do a tap of work unless they like — and she’s a good housekeeper too her aunt tells me. She’s pretty enough to suit him — he’s as particular as never was — and he wan’t crooked and she wan’t deaf when they was born, so it’s likely their children will be all right. I’m that proud when I think of the match.”
Roger fled out of the house, white of face and sick of heart. He went, not to the bay shore, but to Isabel Temple’s grave. He had never been there since the night when he had rescued Lilith, but now he rushed to it in his new agony. His aunt’s horrible practicalities had filled him with disgust — they dragged his love in the dust of sordid things. And Lilith was rich; he had never known that — never suspected it. He could never ask her to marry him now; he must never see her again. For the second time he had lost her, and this second losing could not be borne.
He sat down on the big boulder by the grave and dropped his poor grey face in his hands, moaning in anguish. Nothing was left him, not even dreams. He hoped he could soon die.
He did not know how long he sat there — he did not know when she came. But when he lifted his miserable eyes, he saw her, sitting just a little way from him on the big stone and looking at him with something in her face that made his heart beat madly. He forgot Aunt Catherine’s sacrilege — he forgot that he was a presumptuous fool. He bent forward and kissed her lips for the first time. The wonder of it loosed his bound tongue.
“Lilith,” he gasped, “I love you.”
She put her hand into his and nestled closer to him.
“I thought you would have told me that long ago,” she said.
Uncle Richard’s New Year’s Dinner
Prissy Baker was in Oscar Miller’s store New Year’s morning, buying matches — for New Year’s was not kept as a business holiday in Quincy — when her uncle, Richard Baker, came in. He did not look at Prissy, nor did she wish him a happy New Year; she would not have dared. Uncle Richard had not been on speaking terms with her or her father, his only brother, for eight years.
He was a big, ruddy, prosperous-looking man — an uncle to be proud of, Prissy thought wistfully, if only he were like other people’s uncles, or, indeed, like what he used to be himself. He was the only uncle Prissy had, and when she had been a little girl they had been great friends; but that was before the quarrel, in which Prissy had had no share, to be sure, although Uncle Richard seemed to include her in his rancour.
Richard Baker, so he informed Mr. Miller, was on his way to Navarre with a load of pork.
“I didn’t intend going over until the afternoon,” he said, “but Joe Hemming sent word yesterday he wouldn’t be buying pork after twelve today. So I have to tote my hogs over at once. I don’t care about doing business New Year’s morning.”
“Should think New Year’s would be pretty much the same as any other day to you,” said Mr. Miller, for Richard Baker was a bachelor, with only old Mrs. Janeway to keep house for him.
“Well, I always like a good dinner on New Year’s,” said Richard Baker. “It’s about the only way I can celebrate. Mrs. Janeway wanted to spend the day with her son’s family over at Oriental, so I was laying out to cook my own dinner. I got everything ready in the pantry last night, ‘fore I got word about the pork. I won’t get back from Navarre before one o’clock, so I reckon I’ll have to put up with a cold bite.”
After her Uncle Richard had driven away, Prissy walked thoughtfully home. She had planned to spend a nice, lazy holiday with the new book her father had given her at Christmas and a box of candy. She did not even mean to cook a dinner, for her father had had to go to town that morning to meet a friend and would be gone the whole day. There was nobody else to cook dinner for. Prissy’s mother had died when Prissy was a baby. She was her father’s housekeeper, and they had jolly times together.
But as she walked home, she could not help thinking about Uncle Richard. He would certainly have cold New Year cheer, enough to chill the whole coming year. She felt sorry for him, picturing him returning from Navarre, cold and hungry, to find a fireless house and an uncooked dinner in the pantry.
Suddenly an idea popped into Prissy’s head. Dared she? Oh, she never could! But he would never know — there would be plenty of time — she would!
Prissy hurried home, put her matches away, took a regretful peep at her unopened book, then locked the door and started up the road to Uncle Richard’s house half a mile away. She meant to go and cook Uncle Richard’s dinner for him, get it all beautifully ready, then slip away before he came home. He would never suspect her of it. Prissy would not have him suspect for the world; she thought he would be more likely to throw a dinner of her cooking out of doors than to eat it.
Eight years before this, when Prissy had been nine years old, Richard and Irving Baker had quarrelled over the division of a piece of property. The fault had been mainly on Richard’s side, and that very fact made him all the more unrelenting and stubborn. He had never spoken to his brother since, and he declared he never would. Prissy and her father felt very badly over it, but Uncle Richard did not seem to feel badly at all. To all appearance he had completely forgotten that there were such people in the world as his brother Irving and his niece Prissy.
Prissy had no trouble in breaking into Uncle Richard’s house, for the woodshed door was unfastened. She tripped into the hostile kitchen with rosy cheeks and mischief sparkling in her eyes. This was an adventure — this was fun! She would tell her father all about it when he came home at night and what a laugh they would have!
There was still a good fire in the stove, and in the pantry Prissy found the dinner in its raw state — a fine roast of fresh pork, potatoes, cabbage, turnips and the ingredients of a raisin pudding, fo
r Richard Baker was fond of raisin puddings, and could make them as well as Mrs. Janeway could, if that was anything to boast of.
In a short time the kitchen was full of bubbling and hissings and appetizing odours. Prissy enjoyed herself hugely, and the raisin pudding, which she rather doubtfully mixed up, behaved itself beautifully.
“Uncle Richard said he’d be home by one,” said Prissy to herself, as the clock struck twelve, “so I’ll set the table now, dish up the dinner, and leave it where it will keep warm until he gets here. Then I’ll slip away home. I’d like to see his face when he steps in. I suppose he’ll think one of the Jenner girls across the street has cooked his dinner.”
Prissy soon had the table set, and she was just peppering the turnips when a gruff voice behind her said:
“Well, well, what does this mean?”
Prissy whirled around as if she had been shot, and there stood Uncle Richard in the woodshed door!
Poor Prissy! She could not have looked or felt more guilty if Uncle Richard had caught her robbing his desk. She did not drop the turnips for a wonder; but she was too confused to set them down, so she stood there holding them, her face crimson, her heart thumping, and a horrible choking in her throat.
“I — I — came up to cook your dinner for you, Uncle Richard,” she stammered. “I heard you say — in the store — that Mrs. Janeway had gone home and that you had nobody to cook your New Year’s dinner for you. So I thought I’d come and do it, but I meant to slip away before you came home.”
Poor Prissy felt that she would never get to the end of her explanation. Would Uncle Richard be angry? Would he order her from the house?
“It was very kind of you,” said Uncle Richard drily. “It’s a wonder your father let you come.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 739
