“I guess we don’t set up as judges,” said Henry. “What do you say, preacher?”
“I ... I have nothing to do with the matter,” stammered Curtis.
“You’ll tell silly Alec and little black Lucia anyway, I suppose, and have me turned out on the road.”
“You know they wouldn’t do that.”
“Do you suppose I’d live here now, even if they’d let me?” flashed Alice. “I’d starve first.”
“Why, no, you ain’t going to starve,” said Henry soothingly. “The preacher here can tell Alec and Lucia ... I’m not hankering for that job. It’s you I’m concerned with. Do you know what I’m going to do?”
“No,” said Alice indifferently.
“I’m going to marry you and take you away. That’s what I came home to do.”
Alice sat up in amazement and even Curtis was stirred out of his stupor.
“Do you ... mean that?” said Alice slowly.
“I do. When I came home I supposed I couldn’t since you were bedrid. But since you ain’t, what’s to hinder?”
“But ... how can you want me now?” said Alice, with a sparkle rising in her eyes.
“I don’t know, but I do ... by the nine gods I do,” said Henry emphatically. “I don’t care what you’ve done. Even if you’d taken the money and burned the binder house I’d have wanted you ... though it would have made a difference. You’re the girl I’ve wanted all my life and I’m going to have you. I’ll take you out to the Coast ... you need never see any of the folks round here again.”
“Will you take me away from here tonight ... now?” demanded Alice.
“Sure,” said Henry. “We’ll go right to the station. It’ll be time for the train when we get there. We’ll go into Charlottetown and be married as soon as I can get the licence. Some of the town preachers will do it. I reckon you ain’t hankering for the job, preacher?”
“No ... no,” said Curtis with a shudder. Alice looked at him with contempt.
“And you’ll tell the folks here what is necessary?”
“I s... I suppose so,” said poor Curtis.
Henry bent forward and tapped Alice gently on the shoulder.
“Well, that’s settled. I’ll house and dress you like a queen ... but listen, my girl, listen.”
“Now for the conditions,” said Alice.
“The conditions don’t amount to much. It’s just that there’s to be no more tricks ... no tricks with Henry Kildare. Understand?”
“I ... understand,” said Alice.
“Go upstairs and get ready.”
Alice looked down at her wrapper.
“Got anything to wear besides that?”
“I have my old navy blue suit and hat,” said Alice meekly. “They’re horribly out of style but ...”
“That don’t matter. We can get something as soon as the stores open.”
Alice rose and left the room.
“Well, preacher, what have you got to say?” demanded Henry when she had left the room.
“Nothing,” said Curtis.
Henry nodded.
“Best line to take, I guess. This is one of the things there don’t seem to be any language to fit and that’s a fact. But gosh, wasn’t she clever! Mowbray Narrows will have something to talk about for years. I knew Dr. Blythe thought there was something screwy about it all but even he didn’t suspect the whole truth.”
Alice came down. Her suit fitted her as if made yesterday, her face was flushed with triumph.
Curtis did not speak a word when she passed him in the hall.
“Hate me ... despise me,” she said passionately. “I don’t mind your hate ... but I won’t have your tolerance. And when you marry Lucia remember there is one person in the world who hopes you’ll rue it to your dying day. Lucia isn’t the paragon you imagine her by any means. She’ll rule you ... you’ll always dance to her piping. Good-bye, my dear Mr. Curtis Burns. It may be some comfort to you to know that you have solved the Field mystery after all, though it was only by accident.”
“Come on,” said Henry. “We haven’t too much time as it is. And from this day, Alice Harper, I forbid you to mention this matter to me or anyone. It’s dead ... and we’ll bury it. In a few years it will all be forgotten. And don’t let me hear any sneers at Mr. Burns. He’s one of the best. Good-bye, preacher. It was a lucky chance we missed that train. And don’t be too hard in your judgments of folks you don’t know much about.”
Mr. Sheldon came up to the old Field place the next night, having heard the incredible rumour that flew like a flame through Mowbray Narrows and Glen St. Mary.
Dr. Blythe had been the one to tell him and had said,
“I always thought she had something to do with the goings-on but I confess my imagination didn’t stretch so far. I never believed she was quite so helpless as she pretended but I admit I thought she was in league with Jock or Julia.”
“I never could endure her,” said Anne Blythe emphatically. “There was something in her eyes ... and I knew she hated Lucia.”
“These women!” said the doctor, shaking his head.
Mr. Sheldon listened to Curtis’ story and shook his silvery head, too.
“Well, I suppose after a time I’ll get this through my old noodle and accept it. Just at present I can’t believe it. That’s all. We’ve dreamed it ... we’re dreaming still.”
“I think we all feel like that,” said Curtis. “Alec and Lucia have gone about in a helpless daze all day. They are too stunned to be even angry.”
“What hurts me worst,” said Mr. Sheldon tremulously, “is her ... hypocrisy. She pretended to be so interested in our church ... our work.”
“That may not have been hypocrisy, Mr. Sheldon. It may have been a real side of her warped nature.”
“So Dr. Blythe says. But to me it is incredible.”
“Nothing is incredible with abnormality. Dr. Blythe would tell you that, too. Remember you cannot judge her as you would a normal person.”
“She always seemed normal enough.”
“She has never been normal. Her own story proves that. She was hampered by heredity. Her father and grandfather were dipsomaniacs. You can’t reform your ancestors. And the shock of repressed feeling at the wedding of the man she loved evidently played havoc in her soul.”
“So Dr. Blythe says. But poor Henry Kildare!”
“Oh, not so poor. We’ve always misjudged Henry. A man doesn’t amass a fortune on the Coast without brains. He’s got the woman he always wanted.”
“But what a life ...”
“Not a bit of it. Alice can be very charming when she wants to be. You and I ought to realize that, Mr. Sheldon. Take my word for it, he’ll manage her. Besides, marriage and a home and wealth ... all she always craved ... may have a very salutary effect on her mind ...”
Mr. Sheldon shook his head. The whole thing was beyond him.
“However,” said Curtis, “we may be sure of one thing. She’ll never come back to show off her diamonds in Mowbray Narrows.”
“Mrs. Blythe says she is quite capable of that.”
“Mrs. Blythe is mistaken. No, we’ve seen the last of Alice Harper and Henry Kildare. Don’t think this hasn’t been a shock to me, Mr. Sheldon. It’s the worst I ever had.”
“I fancy there will be compensations,” said Mr. Sheldon slyly. “Mrs. Blythe says ...”
“I’ve heard the Blythes quoted in this matter until I’m tired of it,” said Curtis, a little rudely. “After all, they were only suspicious. They didn’t really know any more than the rest of us. But now I suppose people will say they knew all about it all the time.”
“Well, you know how legends grow. And really Mrs. Blythe has a wonderful insight into character.”
“Well, we’ll leave it at that. And, Mr. Sheldon, let us make a compact. Let us agree never to mention this matter to each other again.”
Mr. Sheldon agreed, a little disappointedly. There were so many things he wanted to know. But he was
not without tact and he saw Lucia Field coming up the lane.
When Curtis came back from the gate in the twilight he came face to face with Lucia in the porch. He had hardly seen her all day, since he had stammered forth his tale in the morning twilight. But now he caught her exultantly.
“Sweetheart ... you’ll listen to me now ... you will ... you will,” he whispered.
Jock was coming across the yard and Lucia twisted herself from his grasp and ran. But before she ran Curtis caught a look in her eyes. He was suddenly a very happy man.
“What will Dr. Blythe say?” he wondered. He knew quite well what Mrs. Blythe would say.
The Closed Door
Before Rachel had been at Briarwold a month there was a saying that whenever she went around a corner, she went into something. Hazel was a sweet thing with dove’s eyes, whom everybody loved, but Rachel was a green-eyed bantling who had been touched with faery from birth. She had an elfin face and slim brown hands that talked as eloquently as her lips, especially when she was telling Cecil and Chris tales of man-eating tigers and Hindoo superstitions she had no business to know. Her devoted missionary parents would have died of horror if they had suspected she did know them. They thought they had protected her so carefully, but Rachel was one of those predestined creatures to whom strange knowledge comes and strange things happen. Very soon after she came to Briarwold she was telling the other children fading old stories of their ancestors... ivory-white women and gallant men... which they had never heard before... mystic wraiths of tales which came alive when Rachel touched them. Everything seemed to come alive when Rachel touched it. When she told the simplest incident it took on a colouring of romance and mystery. She was somehow like a window through which they peeped into an unknown world.
The things she knew! For instance, she knew that if she could only open a door... any door... quickly enough, she would see strange things... perhaps the people who had once lived in it. But she could never open it quite quickly enough. After she told them this every room with a closed door was full of magic for Cecil and Chris. What was going on inside? Even Jane Alicut tiptoed past it, and Jane was impervious to most subtleties. She was the daughter of the new housekeeper at Briarwold... a pudgy, blunt-spoken lass of twelve... the same age as Rachel. Cecil Latham was twelve too, and lived with his mother next door at faded, shabby Pinecroft. Chris, who matched Hazel with ten years of life, lived at Briarwold with Mr. Digby, whom she called Uncle Egerton, although he was only a second cousin of her dead mother. But though it was said they lived at these places this meant that they slept and ate there. They really did their living in the gardens and the pinewoods and the fields. Especially when Rachel and Hazel came. After India’s burning suns Rachel could not get enough of the crystal homeland air and the long, green, rolling fields and the shadowy woods and the moonlight among the beeches. And of course the minute Rachel looked at the landscape she saw things none of the rest of them could.
Cecil and Chris had been good friends and had played together before Rachel came, but Chris was shy and timid and Cecil was shy and timid and they did not just hit it off. Rachel seemed to fuse everybody in an atmosphere of pixy laughter and companionship, and Hazel was like a soft strain of music in the background. So Cecil was having the happiest summer he had ever known, and even the creeping shadow ceased to haunt him.
Rachel had not been at Briarwold two weeks before she found out what the shadow at Pinecroft was. She had been curled up in the wing chair in one corner of the porch when Egerton Digby was talking with his sister-in-law in the other. The chair’s back was towards them and it did not occur to Rachel that they did not know she was there. It is by no means certain that she would have gone away if it had occurred to her.
She heard only snatches. Yet enough to know that Mrs. Latham was very poor and had recently become still poorer by reason of the failure of some company... that it was becoming doubtful if she could keep Cecil... certainly she could not educate him.
“It will come to this,” said Enid Latham in a terrible voice, “I shall have to give him up to his father’s people at last. They’ve always been determined to have him.”
Rachel knew quite well, with that uncanny prescience of hers, that Cecil’s mother did not like his father’s people. To give Cecil to them meant giving him up forever.
“I wish I could help you,” Egerton Digby said. “If I were not so wretchedly hard up myself... and Chris must be provided for...”
“You have done far more than you should already,” said Mrs. Latham. “We have no claim on you.”
“If you had the Peacock Pearl, as you should have had, there would have been no such problems for you,” said Mr. Digby.
He spoke so bitterly that even a less acute child than Rachel might have known that he was touching on something unspeakably painful.
“I am sure that Nora never gave Arthur Nesbitt the pearl,” said Mrs. Latham with a gentle firmness. “She was gay and heedless... my poor, beautiful Nora... but she wasn’t wicked. I don’t believe he was her lover, Egerton. I have never believed it and I never can.”
“I have never believed it either,” said Egerton harshly. “But I can’t be sure... and my doubt has eaten into my soul all these years like a corroding rust. I suppose I loved her too much. And that quarrel we had the last night of her life... the last time I ever saw her. If I could undo it, Enid! But nothing can be undone. Life has beaten me.”
I should like to see life beat me, thought Rachel.
“If she did not give Arthur Nesbitt the pearl, what became of it?” Egerton Digby went on.
“I think if Ralph had lived he could have told us something about that,” said Mrs. Latham. “He was furious because Uncle Michael left the pearl to me.
Why does she hate to mention the name of Ralph, wondered Rachel. It sounds as if it blistered her lips.
“The pearl was an exquisite thing,” said Egerton dreamily. “There is some especial charm and mystery about the jewels of the sea. And its colour... a moonlight blend of blue and green... I never saw anything so lovely. Your Uncle Michael paid fifty thousand for it... and loved it more than he should. Perhaps that was why it brought misfortune.”
“It will kill me if I have to give Cecil up,” said Mrs. Latham.
“I would welcome death,” said Egerton Digby. “Perhaps on the other side of the grave I might find Nora... and know... and kiss our quarrel away.”
They talked longer but they dropped their voices, and Rachel heard nothing further. She thought a great deal over what she had heard. There was a mystery. She felt that she was standing before a closed door and that if she could open it quickly enough she would see things... Nora and the Peacock Pearl among them. The name and idea of the pearl captivated Rachel. She had heard stories of such things in India... rare mysterious old gems of beauty and desire.
I must find out all about it, decided Rachel.
She did not say a word to anybody of what she had heard. Rachel loved secrets. Besides, she was not going to worry Cecil any more than he was worried. But when Jane Alicut began to tell her things one night, when they were alone together in the twilight, Rachel let her talk. Rachel had already discovered how much could be found out just by letting people talk. Everybody was away from Briarwold, and Cecil was staying home because his mother had a headache, so it was an excellent chance for Jane to talk and she took it. Jane, on a lower plane, was as good as Rachel at finding out things. The crudity of her telling hurt Rachel, who loved to soften and beautify as she went along. Jane never suggested mystery. To her a spade was a spade, never a golden trowel which might turn up who knew what of treasure trove.
“I heard Ma talking to Mrs. Agar down in the village about it. Mrs. Agar told Ma everything. Mr. Digby’s wife was Mrs. Latham’s sister and they were dreadful fond of each other... Mrs. Latham and Mrs. Digby, I mean. I dunno if Mrs. Digby was as fond of her husband. Mrs. Agar said there were queer tales. She was a great beauty with a rope of black hair that fell to her
feet. But she was a gay piece and Mr. Digby was jealous as jealous.
“She had a brother called Ralph who was as bad as they make ‘em, but Mrs. Digby always stuck up for him and took his part. She seemed to love him more’n she loved anybody else. Then old Michael Foster... he was their uncle... up and died. He hadn’t much money but he had a big pearl that was worth a king’s ransom, Mrs. Agar said. He’d ruined himself to buy it. And he willed it to Mrs. Latham. Ralph was furious because he thought he should have got it. He said his uncle had promised it to him. He seemed to be sorter a favourite with the old man in spite of his goings-on. They had an awful quarrel over it, Mrs. Agar says. And then one night Mrs. Digby went home... her old home where Ralph and her father lived... to stay all night, and it was burned down and they were all burned to death in it... all three of ‘em... yes, wasn’t it awful! And Mr. Digby nearly went mad. He’s never been the same man since, Mrs. Agar says. His hair turned white in a month. And there was a big to-do because the pearl had disappeared. It never was found either.
“Mrs. Agar says everybody thought Mrs. Digby was going to run away with Arthur Nesbitt and had given him the pearl. He was up to his eyes in debt. He went away after that and word came back that he had lots of money. A nice kettle of fish, wasn’t it? Mrs. Agar says the rich society folks are all like that.”
“But Mr. Digby isn’t rich,” said Rachel.
“No... he’s got poor since his wife was burned to death. He just let everything slide. And of course Mrs. Latham is as poor as a church mouse... everyone knows that. Mrs. Agar says his father’s people want Cecil. They’ve always hated her... they didn’t want Cecil’s father to marry her.”
“You are not to tell Cecil that,” said Rachel.
“Of course I won’t. I like the kid and I’m sorry for him. So’s Ma. I don’t want to hurt his feelings,” protested Jane.
“And I think you’d better not talk about that story to anyone,” continued Rachel austerely. “You’ve talked too much about it now.”
Jane stared. She had certainly felt that Rachel wanted to hear her talk. It wasn’t fair that she should be snubbed like that.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 747
