“I can hold my tongue as well as the next one,” she said sulkily. “You are good at listening, Miss Rachel.”
Rachel smiled... remotely... mysteriously.
“You would be surprised, Jane, if you knew what I can hear sometimes,” she said dreamily.
Rachel felt now that she knew all about the mystery... except the one thing worth knowing. The door was still closed. And she did not know how it was to be opened. She did not have the key. In this impasse Rachel betook herself to prayer. For the daughter of a missionary, Rachel did not pray overmuch. Hazel prayed sweetly and innocently every night and morning, but Rachel made a special, mystic, alluring rite of prayer. She would not make it common. Neither did she kneel down. She stood in the garden by the sundial and lifted her face to the sky with upraised hands, facing God fearlessly.
“Please open the door,” she said, less as a request than as a statement of right. “Because,” she added, “you know that things can’t be right until the door is opened.”
Perhaps what followed on a certain afternoon, which none of the children ever forgot, was an answer to this prayer. You will not get any of those children to discuss it with you. Nobody will talk of it, not even Jane Alicut, who is now a stout matron with a bevy of her own children round her. She tells them many tales of her old playmates at Briarwold, but she never tells the story of that haunted afternoon. She would like to think she dreamed it. When she cannot believe that, she blames it on Rachel. Very likely with justice. I think if Rachel had not been with the other children that day, they would never have stepped through the closed door.
They were to go to tea with old Great-aunt Lucy down at Mount Joy. And they were to go by a short cut through fields and woods which none of them had ever traversed before, but which Uncle Egerton described so clearly that they were quite sure they could follow it. At first they went along the wood path back of Briarwold. They had never gone quite so far into those woods before. But they felt quite at home and very happy. The woods had a friendly mood on that day. They did not always have it. Sometimes they frowned. Sometimes they were wrapped up in their own concerns. But this day they welcomed the children. There were beautiful shadows everywhere. The mosses along the path were emerald and gold. They passed through a little glen full of creamy toadstools. They found a lovely green pool with ferns around it that nobody ever seemed to have found before. Rachel was quite sure that if they waited quietly a faun would come through the trees to peep at himself in it. But they had no time to waste for Great-aunt Lucy was fussy about punctuality.
Jane was with them. Great-aunt Lucy made a point of inviting Jane because she liked her. And Jane’s dog, who had no name because Jane could not find one which would suit everybody, was along too... a gay, light-hearted little mongrel who tore about in the woods and outran them, then sat on his haunches waiting for them to come up with him, laughing at them with his red tongue lolling from his jaws.
After the woods there was a meadow path that enticed them with daisies and was jewelled with the red of wild strawberry leaves. Then came another stretch of woodland... a more shadowy place. The path ran along by a mysterious, fir-darkened brook. The children were never quite sure just when the feeling of something strange came over them. All at once they found themselves drawing closer together. Their light chatter failed them. Even Jane became very quiet. Rachel had been quiet all along that day, now that they came to think of it. She had walked a little apart... listening. She would never talk of it afterwards, so nobody knows what she was listening for or what she expected. Jane’s dog was the only one of the party who kept his spirits up.
“Are you sure this is the right road?” whispered Jane nervously at last. She didn’t know why she must whisper.
“It’s the only road there is,” said Rachel.
A little further on Cecil suddenly said, “If this is the right road, there’s something wrong with it.”
They stared at each other, beginning to be pale. Cecil had put their secret feeling into words.
“There is something wrong with it,” said Rachel. “I’ve known that for some time. And I’m going to find out what it is.”
They went on. It was just as well to go on as to go back, for the chill and fear were all around them now. They dared not stand still. They could not even whisper. Jane’s dog had given up chasing imaginary rabbits but he trotted along sturdily, his tail curled saucily over his back.
All at once they were through the woods and out in the open. A lovely landscape of hill and meadow and homesteads spread below the hill on which they stood. They scrambled over the rotten fence and found themselves in an old, deep-rutted, grass-grown lane which ran down to join a road that went on until it reached the lake. But just beside them was a garden oddly shaped like a triangle, basking in the sunshine, full of flowers and bees and sleepy shadows. And at the tip of this garden triangle was a house.
None of them could recall having seen it before.
It was a large, old-fashioned house, overgrown with vines, and the door was open. On the sun-warm sandstone step a cat was basking... a huge, black cat with pale-green eyes.
An odd hush lay over the windless place. Cecil remembered an old poem he had heard Uncle Egerton reading... a poem that spoke of a land “where the wind never blew.” Had they come to it? What was this lost garden, so full of inescapable mystery? What was wrong with it?
He looked appealingly at Rachel.
“Where are we? I don’t see Aunt Lucy’s anywhere.”
“I’m going to that house to ask,” said Rachel resolutely.
Cecil did not know why he felt such a horror of doing this. He was ashamed to betray his cowardice before a girl, so he went along. They walked up the central path of the garden, past tulips and daffodils and bleeding-heart. Cecil knew what was wrong with the garden now. Tulips and daffodils and bleeding-heart had no right to be there... it was long past the time for them. He felt Chris’s cold little hand steal into his. At the very step Jane’s dog suddenly gave a low whine, turned and fled.
“I suppose he doesn’t like that cat,” said Jane, as if she felt called upon to explain his behaviour.
“Hush,” said Cecil... he didn’t know why.
Rachel knocked... but nobody came. The cat stared at them unblinkingly. The scent of lilacs came on the air, although this was late summer and lilacs are in spring. Never again, as long as he lived, could Cecil endure the scent of lilacs. Beyond they saw a large, square hall and on one side of it was a closed door.
Rachel went in and across the hall to the door. The others followed because following was a little less terrible than staying behind. They were all very cold now. Rachel’s thin shoulders were shivering. But she did a strange thing. She did not knock at the door... she simply set her teeth, turned the knob and went in.
For once she had done it quickly and silently enough.
They were in a beautiful, old-fashioned room. Two other people were also in it. A lady sat by a tea-table whereon were ivory candles in tall silver candlesticks and a bowl of violets. She was very beautiful. Her masses of black hair were held to her head by a golden band. She had a very fine, pale, creamy skin, and she wore a dress of black velvet with long, flowing sleeves of black lace. A great rose of dark-golden velvet was fastened to her shoulder, and the melting, pansy-hued eyes that looked at them were full of allurement and soft fire under the heavy fringing lashes.
A young man was standing by the window, playing with the tassel of the shade. He was handsome too, in a dark and splendid way, but the white hands that pulled at the tassel had terribly long, thin fingers. Cecil knew that he was in the presence of something very evil.
The young man left the window, took a cup from the table and came to the children. Cecil felt as if a dark chill night were coming towards him. But it was Rachel to whom the young man held out the cup. All the children saw the ring on his hand... or, rather, the three rings, fastened to each other by tiny gold chains, so that all three must be taken off o
r put on together. A diamond in one ring, a ruby in another, an emerald in the third, each stone held in a dragon’s mouth.
Rachel shook her head and turned away. Then the lady smiled.
“You are quite right not to take it,” she said. “It would not have hurt you, but you would never have been quite the same again. And you are too different already for your own good. Besides, you would have forgotten us as soon as you went out.”
She rose and came towards them also. Cecil was afraid that she was going to touch him, and he knew that if she did he could not endure it. But it was by Rachel she paused. A little quivering ruby of light fell for a moment on her white neck from the stained-glass window at the far end of the room. The young man stood apart with the window for a background. There was a sneer on his face. He looked like some beautiful fallen angel... dark, impotent and rebellious.
The lady bent her head and said something to Rachel in a very low tone. But they all heard it.
“Tell Egerton I loved him only... Arthur Nesbitt was nothing to me. As for that foolish quarrel of ours... one forgets such things here... only love is remembered. But I did take the pearl... for Ralph. He persuaded me that Uncle Michael meant him to have it... that he was childish and doted when he made the will giving it to Enid. But I had not given it to him. Tell Egerton he will find the pearl among the folds of my wedding gown in the locked box in the attic. I am glad you came and opened the door. So few people would have had the courage to open it. There will be rest now. But go... go quickly.”
They went quickly. Once outside that terrible house, they ran blindly through the garden and down the lane. At the entrance to the wood-path they stopped and looked back.
There was no house. There was only a tangled enclosure with a growth of young trees in the centre among which were the ruins of burned walls.
“Let us go home,” said Jane. “I don’t care what Aunt Lucy thinks. I’m... I’m sick.”
They got home somehow, running, stumbling, clinging together. When they got home nobody would say anything... could say anything... but Rachel. She had something to tell her Uncle Egerton and she told it, closeted with him in the library. Then she went out and flung herself down on the grass by the sundial, shaken with dreadful sobs.
“What did he say?” whispered Cecil.
“He wouldn’t believe me at first, until I happened to mention the three rings the... the man wore. Then he said, ‘The Rajah’s rings... Ralph always wore them.’ And he went to the attic.”
“Was... was it there?”
“Yes. And he looked like... like a man who had got out of hell,” said Rachel.
Nobody was shocked. They had learned that afternoon, looking into Ralph Kilbourne’s eyes, more about hell than they had ever known before. They were too young to have learned so much... which was perhaps why they could never be got to say anything of it. Such things are not good for anybody to know.
“I will never open a closed door again,” shuddered Rachel.
The Deacon’s Painkiller
Andrew was a terrible set man. When he put his foot down, something always squashed — and stayed squashed. In this particular instance, it was poor Amy’s love affair.
“No, my daughter,” he said solemnly (the deacon always spoke solemnly and called Amy “my laughter” when he was going to be contrary), “I — ah, shall never consent to your marrying Dr. Boyd. He is not worthy of you.”
“I’m sure a Boyd is as good as a Poultney any day,” sobbed Amy “And nobody can say a word against Frank.”
“He used to drink, my daughter,” said the deacon more solemnly than ever.
“He never touches a drop now,” said Amy, firing up Amy has a spice of the Barry temper. But the deacon did not get angry. There would have been more hope if he had. You can generally do some-
thing with a man who loses his temper, especially when it comes to repenting time. But Andrew never lost his temper; he just remained placid and aggravating.
“Don’t you know, my poor child,” he said sorrowfully, “that a man who has once been addicted to drink is liable to break out again any time? I — ah, have no faith in Dr. Boyd’s reformation. Look at his father.”
Amy couldn’t very well look at Dr. Boyd’s father, seeing that he had drunk himself to death and been safely buried in Brunswick churchyard for over fifteen years. But she knew the reference clinched the matter in the deacon’s estimation. Amy had not lived with her pa for twenty years without discovering that when he began dragging people’s ancestors from their tombs and hurling them at your head, you might as well stop arguing.
Amy stopped and came upstairs to me and cried instead. I couldn’t do a great deal to comfort her, knowing Andrew as I did. I’d kept house for him ever since his wife, who was my sister, died; he was as fine a man as ever lived in most respects — very generous, never given to nagging; but when he’d once made up his mind on any point, you might as well try to soften the nether millstone.
For one thing, there was nothing you could use as a lever, because the deacon was such a moral man. If he’d had any little vices or foibles, he might have been vulnerable on some point. But he was so godly as to be almost painful. It’s a blessing that he had no sons or they would certainly have gone to the bad by way of keeping the family to a natural average.
Before going any further with this story, I might as well clear up matters in regard to Dr. Boyd. From Andrew’s statement, you might suppose that he had once been a confirmed toper. The fact was that young Frank, in spite of his father, was as sober and steady a lad as you could wish to see; but one summer, just before he went to college, he fell in with a wild set of fellows from town who were out at the beach hotel; they went somewhere to a political meeting one night and all got drunk, young Frank included, and made fearful fools of themselves; the deacon was there, representing the temperance interest, and saw them. After that he never had any use for Frank Boyd. It didn’t make a mite of difference that Frank was terribly ashamed and sorry and never went with those fellows afterwards nor ever was known to taste liquor again. He got through college splendidly and came home and settled in Brunswick and worked up a fine practice. It was of no use, as far as the deacon was concerned. He persisted in regarding Dr. Frank as a reformed rake who might relapse into his evil ways at any moment. And Andrew would have excused a man for murder before he would have excused him for getting drunk.
The deacon was what his enemies — for he had plenty of enemies in spite of, or maybe because of, his goodness — called a temperance fanatic. Now, I’m not going to decry temperance. It’s the right thing, and I’m a white ribboner myself and never touch even homemade currant wine; and a little fanaticism always greases the wheels of any movement. But I’m bound to say that Andrew carried things too far. He was fairly rabid for the temperance cause; and the only man in the world he wouldn’t speak to was Deacon Millar, because Deacon Millar opposed the introduction of unfermented wine for the communion and used whiskey to break up a cold.
So, all these things considered, I thought poor Amy’s prospects for marrying her man were very faint indeed, and I felt nearly as bad over it as she did. I knew that Frank Boyd was her choice, once and forever. Amy is a Barry by nature, even if she is a Poultney by birth, and the Barrys never change — as I could testify; but this isn’t my story. If they can’t marry the one they set their hearts on, they never marry. And Frank Boyd was such a fine young fellow, and everybody liked and respected him. Any man in the world but Andrew would have been delighted at the thought of having him for a son-in-law.
However, I comforted Amy as well as I could and I even agreed to go and argue with her pa, although I knew I should have nothing to show for my waste of breath. And I hadn’t, although I did all that mortal woman could do. I cooked a magnificent dinner with all the deacon’s favourite dishes; and after he had eaten all he possibly could and twice as much as was good for him, I tackled him — and failed. And when a woman fails under those circumstances, she may as
well fold her hands and hold her tongue.
Andrew heard all I had to say politely, as he always did, for he prided himself on his good manners; but I saw right along that it wasn’t sinking in any deeper than the skin.
“No, Juliana,” he said patiently, “I — ah, can never give my daughter to a reformed drunkard.
I — ah, should tremble for her happiness. Besides, think how it would look if I — ah, were to allow my daughter to marry a man addicted to drink, I — ah, who am noted for my sound temperance principles. Why, it would be a handle for the liquor people to use against me. I — ah, beg of you, dear Juliana, not to refer to this painful subject again and not to encourage my daughter in her foolish and unfilial conduct. It will only make an unpleasantness in our peaceful home — an unpleasantness that can in no way further any wishes she or you may have unwisely formed on this subject. I — ah, feel sure that a woman of your prudence and good sense must see this clearly.”
I was seeing red just then, for Andrew’s “I — ah’s” had put me in a regular Barry temper. But I had sense enough to hold my tongue, although I could have cried out for very rage. I took my revenge by feeding the deacon on salt codfish and scraps for a week. He never knew why, but he suffered. However, I’m bound to say he suffered meekly, with the air of a man who knew womenfolk take queer spells and have to be humoured.
For the following month the deacon’s “peaceful home” had a rather uncomfortable atmosphere. Amy cried and moped and fretted, and Dr. Boyd didn’t dare come near the place. Just what would have finally happened, if it hadn’t been for the interposition of Providence, nobody knows. I suppose Amy would either have fretted herself to death and gone into consumption like her ma, or she would have run away with Frank and never been forgiven by her pa to the day of her death. And that would have almost killed her too, for Amy loved her pa — and with good reason, for he had always been an excellent pa to her and never before refused her anything in reason.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 748
