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Rainbow Valley by L. M. Montgomery, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . MORE GOSSIP CHAPTER XV. MORE GOSSIP On the evening after Mrs. Myra Murray of the over-harbour section had been buried Miss Cornelia and Mary Vance came up to Ingleside. There were several things concerning which Miss Cornelia wished to unburden her soul. The funeral had to be all talked over, of course. Susan and Miss Cornelia thrashed this out between them; Anne took no part or delight in such goulish conversations. She sat a little apart and watched the autumnal flame of dahlias in the garden, and the dreaming, glamorous harbour of the September sunset. Mary Vance sat beside her, knitting meekly. Mary’s heart was down in the Rainbow Valley, whence came sweet, distance-softened sounds of children’s laughter, but her fingers were under Miss Cornelia’s eye. She had to knit so many rounds of her stocking before she might go to the valley. Mary knit and held her tongue, but used her ears. “I never saw a nicer looking corpse,” said Miss Cornelia judicially. “Myra Murray was always a pretty woman—she was a Corey from Lowbridge and the Coreys were noted for their good looks.” “I said to the corpse as I passed it, ‘poor woman. I hope you are as happy as you look.’” sighed Susan. “She had not changed much. That dress she wore was the black satin she got for her daughter’s wedding fourteen years ago. Her Aunt told her then to keep it for her funeral, but Myra laughed and said, ‘I may wear it to my funeral, Aunty, but I will have a good time out of it first.’ And I may say she did. Myra Murray was not a woman to attend her own funeral before she died. Many a time afterwards when I saw her enjoying herself out in company I thought to myself, ‘You are a handsome woman, Myra Murray, and that dress becomes you, but it will likely be your shroud at last.’ And you see my words have come true, Mrs. Marshall Elliott.” Susan sighed again heavily. She was enjoying herself hugely. A funeral was really a delightful subject of conversation. “I always liked to meet Myra,” said Miss Cornelia. “She was always so gay and cheerful—she made you feel better just by her handshake. Myra always made the best of things.” “That is true,” asserted Susan. “Her sister-in-law told me that when the doctor told her at last that he could do nothing for her and she would never rise from that bed again, Myra said quite cheerfully, ‘Well, if that is so, I’m thankful the preserving is all done, and I will not have to face the fall house-cleaning. I always liked house-cleaning in spring,’ she says, ‘but I always hated it in the fall. I will get clear of it this year, thank goodness.’ There are people who would call that levity, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, and I think her sister-in-law was a little ashamed of it. She said perhaps her sickness had made Myra a little light-headed. But I said, ‘No, Mrs. Murray, do not worry over it. It was just Myra’s way of looking at the bright side.’” “Her sister Luella was just the opposite,” said Miss Cornelia. “There was no bright side for Luella—there was just black and shades of gray. For years she used always to be declaring she was going to die in a week or so. ‘I won’t be here to burden you long,’ she would tell her family with a groan. And if any of them ventured to talk about their little future plans she’d groan also and say, ‘Ah, I won’t be here then.’ When I went to see her I always agreed with her and it made her so mad that she was always quite a lot better for several days afterwards. She has better health now but no more cheerfulness. Myra was so different. She was always doing or saying something to make some one feel good. Perhaps the men they married had something to do with it. Luella’s man was a Tartar, believe me, while Jim Murray was decent, as men go. He looked heart-broken to-day. It isn’t often I feel sorry for a man at his wife’s funeral, but I did feel for Jim Murray.” “No wonder he looked sad. He will not get a wife like Myra again in a hurry,” said Susan. “Maybe he will not try, since his children are all grown up and Mirabel is able to keep house. But there is no predicting what a widower may or may not do and I, for one, will not try.” “We’ll miss Myra terrible in church,” said Miss Cornelia. “She was such a worker. Nothing ever stumped her. If she couldn’t get over a difficulty she’d get around it, and if she couldn’t get around it she’d pretend it wasn’t there—and generally it wasn’t. ‘I’ll keep a stiff upper lip to my journey’s end,’ said she to me once. Well, she has ended her journey.” “Do you think so?” asked Anne suddenly, coming back from dreamland. “I can’t picture her journey as being ended. Can you think of her sitting down and folding her hands—that eager, asking spirit of hers, with its fine adventurous outlook? No, I think in death she just opened a gate and went through—on—on—to new, shining adventures.” “Maybe—maybe,” assented Miss Cornelia. “Do you know, Anne dearie, I never was much taken with this everlasting rest doctrine myself—though I hope it isn’t heresy to say so. I want to bustle round in heaven the same as here. And I hope there’ll be a celestial substitute for pies and doughnuts—something that has to be MADE. Of course, one does get awful tired at times—and the older you are the tireder you get. But the very tiredest could get rested in something short of eternity, you’d think—except, perhaps, a lazy man.” “When I meet Myra Murray again,” said Anne, “I want to see her coming towards me, brisk and laughing, just as she always did here.” “Oh, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan, in a shocked tone, “you surely do not think that Myra will be laughing in the world to come?” “Why not, Susan? Do you think we will be crying there?” “No, no, Mrs. Dr. dear, do not misunderstand me. I do not think we shall be either crying or laughing.” “What then?” “Well,” said Susan, driven to it, “it is my opinion, Mrs. Dr. dear, that we shall just look solemn and holy.” “And do you really think, Susan,” said Anne, looking solemn enough, “that either Myra Murray or I could look solemn and holy all the time—all the time, Susan?” “Well,” admitted Susan reluctantly, “I might go so far as to say that you both would have to smile now and again, but I can never admit that there will be laughing in heaven. The idea seems really irreverent, Mrs. Dr. dear.” “Well, to come back to earth,” said Miss Cornelia, “who can we get to take Myra’s class in Sunday School? Julia Clow has been teaching it since Myra took ill, but she’s going to town for the winter and we’ll have to get somebody else.” “I heard that Mrs. Laurie Jamieson wanted it,” said Anne. “The Jamiesons have come to church very regularly since they moved to the Glen from Lowbridge.” “New brooms!” said Miss Cornelia dubiously. “Wait till they’ve gone regularly for a year.” “You cannot depend on Mrs. Jamieson a bit, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan solemnly. “She died once and when they were measuring her for her coffin, after laying her out just beautiful, did she not go and come back to life! Now, Mrs. Dr. dear, you know you cannot depend on a woman like that.” “She might turn Methodist at any moment,” said Miss Cornelia. “They tell me they went to the Methodist Church at Lowbridge quite as often as to the Presbyterian. I haven’t caught them at it here yet, but I would not approve of taking Mrs. Jamieson into the Sunday School. Yet we must not offend them. We are losing too many people, by death or bad temper. Mrs. Alec Davis has left the church, no one knows why. She told the managers that she would never pay another cent to Mr. Meredith’s salary. Of course, most people say that the children offended her, but somehow I don’t think so. I tried to pump Faith, but all I could get out of her was that Mrs. Davis had come, seemingly in high good humour, to see her father, and had left in an awful rage, calling them all ‘varmints!’” “Varmints, indeed!” said Susan furiously. “Does Mrs. Alec Davis forget that her uncle on her mother’s side was suspected of poisoning his wife? Not that it was ever proved, Mrs. Dr. dear, and it does not do to believe all you hear. But if I had an uncle whose wife died without any satisfactory reason, I would not go about the country calling innocent children varmints.” “The point is,” said Miss Cornelia, “that Mrs. Davis paid a large subscription, and how its loss is going to be made up is a problem. And if she turns the other Douglases against Mr. Meredith, as she will certainly try to do, he will just have to go.” “I do not think Mrs. Alec Davis is very well liked by the rest of the clan,” said Susan. “It is not likely she will be able to influence them.” “But those Douglases all hang together so. If you touch one, you touch all. We can’t do without them, so much is certain. They pay half the salary. They are not mean, whatever else may be said of them. Norman Douglas used to give a hundred a year long ago before he left.” “What did he leave for?” asked Anne. “He declared a member of the session cheated him in a cow deal. He hasn’t come to church for twenty years. His wife used to come regular while she was alive, poor thing, but he never would let her pay anything, except one red cent every Sunday. She felt dreadfully humiliated. I don’t know that he was any too good a husband to her, though she was never heard to complain. But she always had a cowed look. Norman Douglas didn’t get the woman he wanted thirty years ago and the Douglases never liked to put up with second best.” “Who was the woman he did want.” “Ellen West. They weren’t engaged exactly, I believe, but they went about together for two years. And then they just broke off—nobody ever knew why. Just some silly quarrel, I suppose. And Norman went and married Hester Reese before his temper had time to cool—married her just to spite Ellen, I haven’t a doubt. So like a man! Hester was a nice little thing, but she never had much spirit and he broke what little she had. She was too meek for Norman. He needed a woman who could stand up to him. Ellen would have kept him in fine order and he would have liked her all the better for it. He despised Hester, that is the truth, just because she always gave in to him. I used to hear him say many a time, long ago when he was a young fellow ‘Give me a spunky woman—spunk for me every time.’ And then he went and married a girl who couldn’t say boo to a goose—man-like. That family of Reeses were just vegetables. They went through the motions of living, but they didn’t live.” “Russell Reese used his first wife’s wedding-ring to marry his second,” said Susan reminiscently. “That was too economical in my opinion, Mrs. Dr. dear. And his brother John has his own tombstone put up in the over-harbour graveyard, with everything on it but the date of death, and he goes and looks at it every Sunday. Most folks would not consider that much fun, but it is plain he does. People do have such different ideas of enjoyment. As for Norman Douglas, he is a perfect heathen. When the last minister asked him why he never went to church he said ‘Too many ugly women there, parson—too many ugly women!’ I should like to go to such a man, Mrs. Dr. dear, and say to him solemnly, ‘There is a hell!’” “Oh, Norman doesn’t believe there is such a place,” said Miss Cornelia. “I hope he’ll find out his mistake when he comes to die. There, Mary, you’ve knit your three inches and you can go and play with the children for half an hour.” Mary needed no second bidding. She flew to Rainbow Valley with a heart as light as her heels, and in the course of conversation told Faith Meredith all about Mrs. Alec Davis. “And Mrs. Elliott says that she’ll turn all the Douglases against your father and then he’ll have to leave the Glen because his salary won’t be paid,” concluded Mary. “I don’t know what is to be done, honest to goodness. If only old Norman Douglas would come back to church and pay, it wouldn’t be so bad. But he won’t—and the Douglases will leave—and you all will have to go.” Faith carried a heavy heart to bed with her that night. The thought of leaving the Glen was unbearable. Nowhere else in the world were there such chums as the Blythes. Her little heart had been wrung when they had left Maywater—she had shed many bitter tears when she parted with Maywater chums and the old manse there where her mother had lived and died. She could not contemplate calmly the thought of such another and harder wrench. She couldn’t leave Glen St. Mary and dear Rainbow Valley and that delicious graveyard. “It’s awful to be minister’s family,” groaned Faith into her pillow. “Just as soon as you get fond of a place you are torn up by the roots. I’ll never, never, never marry a minister, no matter how nice he is.” Faith sat up in bed and looked out of the little vine-hung window. The night was very still, the silence broken only by Una’s soft breathing. Faith felt terribly alone in the world. She could see Glen St. Mary lying under the starry blue meadows of the autumn night. Over the valley a light shone from the girls’ room at Ingleside, and another from Walter’s room. Faith wondered if poor Walter had toothache again. Then she sighed, with a little passing sigh of envy of Nan and Di. They had a mother and a settled home—they were not at the mercy of people who got angry without any reason and called you a varmint. Away beyond the Glen, amid fields that were very quiet with sleep, another light was burning. Faith knew it shone in the house where Norman Douglas lived. He was reputed to sit up all hours of the night reading. Mary had said if he could only be induced to return to the church all would be well. And why not? Faith looked at a big, low star hanging over the tall, pointed spruce at the gate of the Methodist Church and had an inspiration. She knew what ought to be done and she, Faith Meredith, would do it. She would make everything right. With a sigh of satisfaction, she turned from the lonely, dark world and cuddled down beside Una. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. L. M. Montgomery (2004). Rainbow Valley. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5343/pg5343-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

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Rainbow Valley by L. M. Montgomery, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . UNA INTERVENES here CHAPTER IX. UNA INTERVENES Miss Cornelia had an interview with Mr. Meredith which proved something of a shock to that abstracted gentleman. She pointed out to him, none too respectfully, his dereliction of duty in allowing a waif like Mary Vance to come into his family and associate with his children without knowing or learning anything about her. “I don’t say there is much harm done, of course,” she concluded. “This Mary-creature isn’t what you might call bad, when all is said and done. I’ve been questioning your children and the Blythes, and from what I can make out there’s nothing much to be said against the child except that she’s slangy and doesn’t use very refined language. But think what might have happened if she’d been like some of those home children we know of. You know yourself what that poor little creature the Jim Flaggs’ had, taught and told the Flagg children.” Mr. Meredith did know and was honestly shocked over his own carelessness in the matter. “But what is to be done, Mrs. Elliott?” he asked helplessly. “We can’t turn the poor child out. She must be cared for.” “Of course. We’d better write to the Hopetown authorities at once. Meanwhile, I suppose she might as well stay here for a few more days till we hear from them. But keep your eyes and ears open, Mr. Meredith.” Susan would have died of horror on the spot if she had heard Miss Cornelia so admonishing a minister. But Miss Cornelia departed in a warm glow of satisfaction over duty done, and that night Mr. Meredith asked Mary to come into his study with him. Mary obeyed, looking literally ghastly with fright. But she got the surprise of her poor, battered little life. This man, of whom she had stood so terribly in awe, was the kindest, gentlest soul she had ever met. Before she knew what happened Mary found herself pouring all her troubles into his ear and receiving in return such sympathy and tender understanding as it had never occurred to her to imagine. Mary left the study with her face and eyes so softened that Una hardly knew her. “Your father’s all right, when he does wake up,” she said with a sniff that just escaped being a sob. “It’s a pity he doesn’t wake up oftener. He said I wasn’t to blame for Mrs. Wiley dying, but that I must try to think of her good points and not of her bad ones. I dunno what good points she had, unless it was keeping her house clean and making first-class butter. I know I ‘most wore my arms out scrubbing her old kitchen floor with the knots in it. But anything your father says goes with me after this.” Mary proved a rather dull companion in the following days, however. She confided to Una that the more she thought of going back to the asylum the more she hated it. Una racked her small brains for some way of averting it, but it was Nan Blythe who came to the rescue with a somewhat startling suggestion. “Mrs. Elliott might take Mary herself. She has a great big house and Mr. Elliott is always wanting her to have help. It would be just a splendid place for Mary. Only she’d have to behave herself.” “Oh, Nan, do you think Mrs. Elliott would take her?” “It wouldn’t do any harm if you asked her,” said Nan. At first Una did not think she could. She was so shy that to ask a favour of anybody was agony to her. And she was very much in awe of the bustling, energetic Mrs. Elliott. She liked her very much and always enjoyed a visit to her house; but to go and ask her to adopt Mary Vance seemed such a height of presumption that Una’s timid spirit quailed. When the Hopetown authorities wrote to Mr. Meredith to send Mary to them without delay Mary cried herself to sleep in the manse attic that night and Una found a desperate courage. The next evening she slipped away from the manse to the harbour road. Far down in Rainbow Valley she heard joyous laughter but her way lay not there. She was terribly pale and terribly in earnest—so much so that she took no notice of the people she met—and old Mrs. Stanley Flagg was quite huffed and said Una Meredith would be as absentminded as her father when she grew up. Miss Cornelia lived half way between the Glen and Four Winds Point, in a house whose original glaring green hue had mellowed down to an agreeable greenish gray. Marshall Elliott had planted trees about it and set out a rose garden and a spruce hedge. It was quite a different place from what it had been in years agone. The manse children and the Ingleside children liked to go there. It was a beautiful walk down the old harbour road, and there was always a well-filled cooky jar at the end. The misty sea was lapping softly far down on the sands. Three big boats were skimming down the harbour like great white sea-birds. A schooner was coming up the channel. The world of Four Winds was steeped in glowing colour, and subtle music, and strange glamour, and everybody should have been happy in it. But when Una turned in at Miss Cornelia’s gate her very legs had almost refused to carry her. Miss Cornelia was alone on the veranda. Una had hoped Mr. Elliott would be there. He was so big and hearty and twinkly that there would be encouragement in his presence. She sat on the little stool Miss Cornelia brought out and tried to eat the doughnut Miss Cornelia gave her. It stuck in her throat, but she swallowed desperately lest Miss Cornelia be offended. She could not talk; she was still pale; and her big, dark-blue eyes looked so piteous that Miss Cornelia concluded the child was in some trouble. “What’s on your mind, dearie?” she asked. “There’s something, that’s plain to be seen.” Una swallowed the last twist of doughnut with a desperate gulp. “Mrs. Elliott, won’t you take Mary Vance?” she said beseechingly. Miss Cornelia stared blankly. “Me! Take Mary Vance! Do you mean keep her?” “Yes—keep her—adopt her,” said Una eagerly, gaining courage now that the ice was broken. “Oh, Mrs. Elliott, please do. She doesn’t want to go back to the asylum—she cries every night about it. She’s so afraid of being sent to another hard place. And she’s so smart—there isn’t anything she can’t do. I know you wouldn’t be sorry if you took her.” “I never thought of such a thing,” said Miss Cornelia rather helplessly. “Won’t you think of it?” implored Una. “But, dearie, I don’t want help. I’m quite able to do all the work here. And I never thought I’d like to have a home girl if I did need help.” The light went out of Una’s eyes. Her lips trembled. She sat down on her stool again, a pathetic little figure of disappointment, and began to cry. “Don’t—dearie—don’t,” exclaimed Miss Cornelia in distress. She could never bear to hurt a child. “I don’t say I won’t take her—but the idea is so new it has just kerflummuxed me. I must think it over.” “Mary is so smart,” said Una again. “Humph! So I’ve heard. I’ve heard she swears, too. Is that true?” “I’ve never heard her swear exactly,” faltered Una uncomfortably. “But I’m afraid she could.” “I believe you! Does she always tell the truth?” “I think she does, except when she’s afraid of a whipping.” “And yet you want me to take her!” “Some one has to take her,” sobbed Una. “Some one has to look after her, Mrs. Elliott.” “That’s true. Perhaps it is my duty to do it,” said Miss Cornelia with a sigh. “Well, I’ll have to talk it over with Mr. Elliott. So don’t say anything about it just yet. Take another doughnut, dearie.” Una took it and ate it with a better appetite. “I’m very fond of doughnuts,” she confessed “Aunt Martha never makes any. But Miss Susan at Ingleside does, and sometimes she lets us have a plateful in Rainbow Valley. Do you know what I do when I’m hungry for doughnuts and can’t get any, Mrs. Elliott?” “No, dearie. What?” “I get out mother’s old cook book and read the doughnut recipe—and the other recipes. They sound so nice. I always do that when I’m hungry—especially after we’ve had ditto for dinner. Then I read the fried chicken and the roast goose recipes. Mother could make all those nice things.” “Those manse children will starve to death yet if Mr. Meredith doesn’t get married,” Miss Cornelia told her husband indignantly after Una had gone. “And he won’t—and what’s to be done? And shall we take this Mary-creature, Marshall?” “Yes, take her,” said Marshall laconically. “Just like a man,” said his wife, despairingly. “‘Take her’—as if that was all. There are a hundred things to be considered, believe me.” “Take her—and we’ll consider them afterwards, Cornelia,” said her husband. In the end Miss Cornelia did take her and went up to announce her decision to the Ingleside people first. “Splendid!” said Anne delightedly. “I’ve been hoping you would do that very thing, Miss Cornelia. I want that poor child to get a good home. I was a homeless little orphan just like her once.” “I don’t think this Mary-creature is or ever will be much like you,” retorted Miss Cornelia gloomily. “She’s a cat of another colour. But she’s also a human being with an immortal soul to save. I’ve got a shorter catechism and a small tooth comb and I’m going to do my duty by her, now that I’ve set my hand to the plough, believe me.” Mary received the news with chastened satisfaction. “It’s better luck than I expected,” she said. “You’ll have to mind your p’s and q’s with Mrs. Elliott,” said Nan. “Well, I can do that,” flashed Mary. “I know how to behave when I want to just as well as you, Nan Blythe.” “You mustn’t use bad words, you know, Mary,” said Una anxiously. “I s’pose she’d die of horror if I did,” grinned Mary, her white eyes shining with unholy glee over the idea. “But you needn’t worry, Una. Butter won’t melt in my mouth after this. I’ll be all prunes and prisms.” “Nor tell lies,” added Faith. “Not even to get off from a whipping?” pleaded Mary. “Mrs. Elliott will never whip you—never,” exclaimed Di. “Won’t she?” said Mary skeptically. “If I ever find myself in a place where I ain’t licked I’ll think it’s heaven all right. No fear of me telling lies then. I ain’t fond of telling ‘em—I’d ruther not, if it comes to that.” The day before Mary’s departure from the manse they had a picnic in her honour in Rainbow Valley, and that evening all the manse children gave her something from their scanty store of treasured things for a keepsake. Carl gave her his Noah’s ark and Jerry his second best jew’s-harp. Faith gave her a little hairbrush with a mirror in the back of it, which Mary had always considered very wonderful. Una hesitated between an old beaded purse and a gay picture of Daniel in the lion’s den, and finally offered Mary her choice. Mary really hankered after the beaded purse, but she knew Una loved it, so she said, “Give me Daniel. I’d rusher have it ‘cause I’m partial to lions. Only I wish they’d et Daniel up. It would have been more exciting.” At bedtime Mary coaxed Una to sleep with her. “It’s for the last time,” she said, “and it’s raining tonight, and I hate sleeping up there alone when it’s raining on account of that graveyard. I don’t mind it on fine nights, but a night like this I can’t see anything but the rain pouring down on them old white stones, and the wind round the window sounds as if them dead people were trying to get in and crying ‘cause they couldn’t.” “I like rainy nights,” said Una, when they were cuddled down together in the little attic room, “and so do the Blythe girls.” “I don’t mind ‘em when I’m not handy to graveyards,” said Mary. “If I was alone here I’d cry my eyes out I’d be so lonesome. I feel awful bad to be leaving you all.” “Mrs. Elliott will let you come up and play in Rainbow Valley quite often I’m sure,” said Una. “And you will be a good girl, won’t you, Mary?” “Oh, I’ll try,” sighed Mary. “But it won’t be as easy for me to be good—inside, I mean, as well as outside—as it is for you. You hadn’t such scalawags of relations as I had.” “But your people must have had some good qualities as well as bad ones,” argued Una. “You must live up to them and never mind their bad ones.” “I don’t believe they had any good qualities,” said Mary gloomily. “I never heard of any. My grandfather had money, but they say he was a rascal. No, I’ll just have to start out on my own hook and do the best I can.” “And God will help you, you know, Mary, if you ask Him.” “I don’t know about that.” “Oh, Mary. You know we asked God to get a home for you and He did.” “I don’t see what He had to do with it,” retorted Mary. “It was you put it into Mrs. Elliott’s head.” “But God put it into her heart to take you. All my putting it into her head wouldn’t have done any good if He hadn’t.” “Well, there may be something in that,” admitted Mary. “Mind you, I haven’t got anything against God, Una. I’m willing to give Him a chance. But, honest, I think He’s an awful lot like your father—just absent-minded and never taking any notice of a body most of the time, but sometimes waking up all of a suddent and being awful good and kind and sensible.” “Oh, Mary, no!” exclaimed horrified Una. “God isn’t a bit like father—I mean He’s a thousand times better and kinder.” “If He’s as good as your father He’ll do for me,” said Mary. “When your father was talking to me I felt as if I never could be bad any more.” “I wish you’d talk to father about Him,” sighed Una. “He can explain it all so much better than I can.” “Why, so I will, next time he wakes up,” promised Mary. “That night he talked to me in the study he showed me real clear that my praying didn’t kill Mrs. Wiley. My mind’s been easy since, but I’m real cautious about praying. I guess the old rhyme is the safest. Say, Una, it seems to me if one has to pray to anybody it’d be better to pray to the devil than to God. God’s good, anyhow so you say, so He won’t do you any harm, but from all I can make out the devil needs to be pacified. I think the sensible way would be to say to him, ‘Good devil, please don’t tempt me. Just leave me alone, please.’ Now, don’t you?” “Oh, no, no, Mary. I’m sure it couldn’t be right to pray to the devil. And it wouldn’t do any good because he’s bad. It might aggravate him and he’d be worse than ever.” “Well, as to this God-matter,” said Mary stubbornly, “since you and I can’t settle it, there ain’t no use in talking more about it until we’ve a chanct to find out the rights of it. I’ll do the best I can alone till then.” “If mother was alive she could tell us everything,” said Una with a sigh. “I wisht she was alive,” said Mary. “I don’t know what’s going to become of you youngsters when I’m gone. Anyhow, do try and keep the house a little tidy. The way people talks about it is scandalous. And the first thing you know your father will be getting married again and then your noses will be out of joint.” Una was startled. The idea of her father marrying again had never presented itself to her before. She did not like it and she lay silent under the chill of it. “Stepmothers are awful creatures,” Mary went on. “I could make your blood run cold if I was to tell you all I know about ‘em. The Wilson kids across the road from Wiley’s had a stepmother. She was just as bad to ‘em as Mrs. Wiley was to me. It’ll be awful if you get a stepmother.” “I’m sure we won’t,” said Una tremulously. “Father won’t marry anybody else.” “He’ll be hounded into it, I expect,” said Mary darkly. “All the old maids in the settlement are after him. There’s no being up to them. And the worst of stepmothers is, they always set your father against you. He’d never care anything about you again. He’d always take her part and her children’s part. You see, she’d make him believe you were all bad.” “I wish you hadn’t told me this, Mary,” cried Una. “It makes me feel so unhappy.” “I only wanted to warn you,” said Mary, rather repentantly. “Of course, your father’s so absent-minded he mightn’t happen to think of getting married again. But it’s better to be prepared.” Long after Mary slept serenely little Una lay awake, her eyes smarting with tears. On, how dreadful it would be if her father should marry somebody who would make him hate her and Jerry and Faith and Carl! She couldn’t bear it—she couldn’t! Mary had not instilled any poison of the kind Miss Cornelia had feared into the manse children’s minds. Yet she had certainly contrived to do a little mischief with the best of intentions. But she slept dreamlessly, while Una lay awake and the rain fell and the wind wailed around the old gray manse. And the Rev. John Meredith forgot to go to bed at all because he was absorbed in reading a life of St. Augustine. It was gray dawn when he finished it and went upstairs, wrestling with the problems of two thousand years ago. The door of the girls’ room was open and he saw Faith lying asleep, rosy and beautiful. He wondered where Una was. Perhaps she had gone over to “stay all night” with the Blythe girls. She did this occasionally, deeming it a great treat. John Meredith sighed. He felt that Una’s whereabouts ought not to be a mystery to him. Cecelia would have looked after her better than that. If only Cecelia were still with him! How pretty and gay she had been! How the old manse up at Maywater had echoed to her songs! And she had gone away so suddenly, taking her laughter and music and leaving silence—so suddenly that he had never quite got over his feeling of amazement. How could she, the beautiful and vivid, have died? The idea of a second marriage had never presented itself seriously to John Meredith. He had loved his wife so deeply that he believed he could never care for any woman again. He had a vague idea that before very long Faith would be old enough to take her mother’s place. Until then, he must do the best he could alone. He sighed and went to his room, where the bed was still unmade. Aunt Martha had forgotten it, and Mary had not dared to make it because Aunt Martha had forbidden her to meddle with anything in the minister’s room. But Mr. Meredith did not notice that it was unmade. His last thoughts were of St. Augustine. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. L. M. Montgomery (2004). Rainbow Valley. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5343/pg5343-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

UNA INTERVENES

THE ADVENT OF MARY VANCE

Rainbow Valley by L. M. Montgomery, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE MANSE CHILDREN CHAPTER IV. THE MANSE CHILDREN Aunt Martha might be, and was, a very poor housekeeper; the Rev. John Knox Meredith might be, and was, a very absent-minded, indulgent man. But it could not be denied that there was something very homelike and lovable about the Glen St. Mary manse in spite of its untidiness. Even the critical housewives of the Glen felt it, and were unconsciously mellowed in judgment because of it. Perhaps its charm was in part due to accidental circumstances—the luxuriant vines clustering over its gray, clap-boarded walls, the friendly acacias and balm-of-gileads that crowded about it with the freedom of old acquaintance, and the beautiful views of harbour and sand-dunes from its front windows. But these things had been there in the reign of Mr. Meredith’s predecessor, when the manse had been the primmest, neatest, and dreariest house in the Glen. So much of the credit must be given to the personality of its new inmates. There was an atmosphere of laughter and comradeship about it; the doors were always open; and inner and outer worlds joined hands. Love was the only law in Glen St. Mary manse. The people of his congregation said that Mr. Meredith spoiled his children. Very likely he did. It is certain that he could not bear to scold them. “They have no mother,” he used to say to himself, with a sigh, when some unusually glaring peccadillo forced itself upon his notice. But he did not know the half of their goings-on. He belonged to the sect of dreamers. The windows of his study looked out on the graveyard but, as he paced up and down the room, reflecting deeply on the immortality of the soul, he was quite unaware that Jerry and Carl were playing leap-frog hilariously over the flat stones in that abode of dead Methodists. Mr. Meredith had occasional acute realizations that his children were not so well looked after, physically or morally, as they had been before his wife died, and he had always a dim sub-consciousness that house and meals were very different under Aunt Martha’s management from what they had been under Cecilia’s. For the rest, he lived in a world of books and abstractions; and, therefore, although his clothes were seldom brushed, and although the Glen housewives concluded, from the ivory-like pallor of his clear-cut features and slender hands, that he never got enough to eat, he was not an unhappy man. If ever a graveyard could be called a cheerful place, the old Methodist graveyard at Glen St. Mary might be so called. The new graveyard, at the other side of the Methodist church, was a neat and proper and doleful spot; but the old one had been left so long to Nature’s kindly and gracious ministries that it had become very pleasant. It was surrounded on three sides by a dyke of stones and sod, topped by a gray and uncertain paling. Outside the dyke grew a row of tall fir trees with thick, balsamic boughs. The dyke, which had been built by the first settlers of the Glen, was old enough to be beautiful, with mosses and green things growing out of its crevices, violets purpling at its base in the early spring days, and asters and golden-rod making an autumnal glory in its corners. Little ferns clustered companionably between its stones, and here and there a big bracken grew. On the eastern side there was neither fence nor dyke. The graveyard there straggled off into a young fir plantation, ever pushing nearer to the graves and deepening eastward into a thick wood. The air was always full of the harp-like voices of the sea, and the music of gray old trees, and in the spring mornings the choruses of birds in the elms around the two churches sang of life and not of death. The Meredith children loved the old graveyard. Blue-eyed ivy, “garden-spruce,” and mint ran riot over the sunken graves. Blueberry bushes grew lavishly in the sandy corner next to the fir wood. The varying fashions of tombstones for three generations were to be found there, from the flat, oblong, red sandstone slabs of old settlers, down through the days of weeping willows and clasped hands, to the latest monstrosities of tall “monuments” and draped urns. One of the latter, the biggest and ugliest in the graveyard, was sacred to the memory of a certain Alec Davis who had been born a Methodist but had taken to himself a Presbyterian bride of the Douglas clan. She had made him turn Presbyterian and kept him toeing the Presbyterian mark all his life. But when he died she did not dare to doom him to a lonely grave in the Presbyterian graveyard over-harbour. His people were all buried in the Methodist cemetery; so Alec Davis went back to his own in death and his widow consoled herself by erecting a monument which cost more than any of the Methodists could afford. The Meredith children hated it, without just knowing why, but they loved the old, flat, bench-like stones with the tall grasses growing rankly about them. They made jolly seats for one thing. They were all sitting on one now. Jerry, tired of leap frog, was playing on a jew’s-harp. Carl was lovingly poring over a strange beetle he had found; Una was trying to make a doll’s dress, and Faith, leaning back on her slender brown wrists, was swinging her bare feet in lively time to the jew’s-harp. Jerry had his father’s black hair and large black eyes, but in him the latter were flashing instead of dreamy. Faith, who came next to him, wore her beauty like a rose, careless and glowing. She had golden-brown eyes, golden-brown curls and crimson cheeks. She laughed too much to please her father’s congregation and had shocked old Mrs. Taylor, the disconsolate spouse of several departed husbands, by saucily declaring—in the church-porch at that—“The world isn’t a vale of tears, Mrs. Taylor. It’s a world of laughter.” Little dreamy Una was not given to laughter. Her braids of straight, dead-black hair betrayed no lawless kinks, and her almond-shaped, dark-blue eyes had something wistful and sorrowful in them. Her mouth had a trick of falling open over her tiny white teeth, and a shy, meditative smile occasionally crept over her small face. She was much more sensitive to public opinion than Faith, and had an uneasy consciousness that there was something askew in their way of living. She longed to put it right, but did not know how. Now and then she dusted the furniture—but it was so seldom she could find the duster because it was never in the same place twice. And when the clothes-brush was to be found she tried to brush her father’s best suit on Saturdays, and once sewed on a missing button with coarse white thread. When Mr. Meredith went to church next day every female eye saw that button and the peace of the Ladies’ Aid was upset for weeks. Carl had the clear, bright, dark-blue eyes, fearless and direct, of his dead mother, and her brown hair with its glints of gold. He knew the secrets of bugs and had a sort of freemasonry with bees and beetles. Una never liked to sit near him because she never knew what uncanny creature might be secreted about him. Jerry refused to sleep with him because Carl had once taken a young garter snake to bed with him; so Carl slept in his old cot, which was so short that he could never stretch out, and had strange bed-fellows. Perhaps it was just as well that Aunt Martha was half blind when she made that bed. Altogether they were a jolly, lovable little crew, and Cecilia Meredith’s heart must have ached bitterly when she faced the knowledge that she must leave them. “Where would you like to be buried if you were a Methodist?” asked Faith cheerfully. This opened up an interesting field of speculation. “There isn’t much choice. The place is full,” said Jerry. “I’d like that corner near the road, I guess. I could hear the teams going past and the people talking.” “I’d like that little hollow under the weeping birch,” said Una. “That birch is such a place for birds and they sing like mad in the mornings.” “I’d take the Porter lot where there’s so many children buried. I like lots of company,” said Faith. “Carl, where’d you?” “I’d rather not be buried at all,” said Carl, “but if I had to be I’d like the ant-bed. Ants are awf’ly int’resting.” “How very good all the people who are buried here must have been,” said Una, who had been reading the laudatory old epitaphs. “There doesn’t seem to be a single bad person in the whole graveyard. Methodists must be better than Presbyterians after all.” “Maybe the Methodists bury their bad people just like they do cats,” suggested Carl. “Maybe they don’t bother bringing them to the graveyard at all.” “Nonsense,” said Faith. “The people that are buried here weren’t any better than other folks, Una. But when anyone is dead you mustn’t say anything of him but good or he’ll come back and ha’nt you. Aunt Martha told me that. I asked father if it was true and he just looked through me and muttered, ‘True? True? What is truth? What is truth, O jesting Pilate?’ I concluded from that it must be true.” “I wonder if Mr. Alec Davis would come back and ha’nt me if I threw a stone at the urn on top of his tombstone,” said Jerry. “Mrs. Davis would,” giggled Faith. “She just watches us in church like a cat watching mice. Last Sunday I made a face at her nephew and he made one back at me and you should have seen her glare. I’ll bet she boxed his ears when they got out. Mrs. Marshall Elliott told me we mustn’t offend her on any account or I’d have made a face at her, too!” “They say Jem Blythe stuck out his tongue at her once and she would never have his father again, even when her husband was dying,” said Jerry. “I wonder what the Blythe gang will be like.” “I liked their looks,” said Faith. The manse children had been at the station that afternoon when the Blythe small fry had arrived. “I liked Jem’s looks especially.” “They say in school that Walter’s a sissy,” said Jerry. “I don’t believe it,” said Una, who had thought Walter very handsome. “Well, he writes poetry, anyhow. He won the prize the teacher offered last year for writing a poem, Bertie Shakespeare Drew told me. Bertie’s mother thought he should have got the prize because of his name, but Bertie said he couldn’t write poetry to save his soul, name or no name.” “I suppose we’ll get acquainted with them as soon as they begin going to school,” mused Faith. “I hope the girls are nice. I don’t like most of the girls round here. Even the nice ones are poky. But the Blythe twins look jolly. I thought twins always looked alike, but they don’t. I think the red-haired one is the nicest.” “I liked their mother’s looks,” said Una with a little sigh. Una envied all children their mothers. She had been only six when her mother died, but she had some very precious memories, treasured in her soul like jewels, of twilight cuddlings and morning frolics, of loving eyes, a tender voice, and the sweetest, gayest laugh. “They say she isn’t like other people,” said Jerry. “Mrs. Elliot says that is because she never really grew up,” said Faith. “She’s taller than Mrs. Elliott.” “Yes, yes, but it is inside—Mrs. Elliot says Mrs. Blythe just stayed a little girl inside.” “What do I smell?” interrupted Carl, sniffing. They all smelled it now. A most delectable odour came floating up on the still evening air from the direction of the little woodsy dell below the manse hill. “That makes me hungry,” said Jerry. “We had only bread and molasses for supper and cold ditto for dinner,” said Una plaintively. Aunt Martha’s habit was to boil a large slab of mutton early in the week and serve it up every day, cold and greasy, as long as it lasted. To this Faith, in a moment of inspiration, had give the name of “ditto”, and by this it was invariably known at the manse. “Let’s go and see where that smell is coming from,” said Jerry. They all sprang up, frolicked over the lawn with the abandon of young puppies, climbed a fence, and tore down the mossy slope, guided by the savory lure that ever grew stronger. A few minutes later they arrived breathlessly in the sanctum sanctorum of Rainbow Valley where the Blythe children were just about to give thanks and eat. They halted shyly. Una wished they had not been so precipitate: but Di Blythe was equal to that and any occasion. She stepped forward, with a comrade’s smile. “I guess I know who you are,” she said. “You belong to the manse, don’t you?” Faith nodded, her face creased by dimples. “We smelled your trout cooking and wondered what it was.” “You must sit down and help us eat them,” said Di. “Maybe you haven’t more than you want yourselves,” said Jerry, looking hungrily at the tin platter. “We’ve heaps—three apiece,” said Jem. “Sit down.” No more ceremony was necessary. Down they all sat on mossy stones. Merry was that feast and long. Nan and Di would probably have died of horror had they known what Faith and Una knew perfectly well—that Carl had two young mice in his jacket pocket. But they never knew it, so it never hurt them. Where can folks get better acquainted than over a meal table? When the last trout had vanished, the manse children and the Ingleside children were sworn friends and allies. They had always known each other and always would. The race of Joseph recognized its own. They poured out the history of their little pasts. The manse children heard of Avonlea and Green Gables, of Rainbow Valley traditions, and of the little house by the harbour shore where Jem had been born. The Ingleside children heard of Maywater, where the Merediths had lived before coming to the Glen, of Una’s beloved, one-eyed doll and Faith’s pet rooster. Faith was inclined to resent the fact that people laughed at her for petting a rooster. She liked the Blythes because they accepted it without question. “A handsome rooster like Adam is just as nice a pet as a dog or cat, I think,” she said. “If he was a canary nobody would wonder. And I brought him up from a little, wee, yellow chicken. Mrs. Johnson at Maywater gave him to me. A weasel had killed all his brothers and sisters. I called him after her husband. I never liked dolls or cats. Cats are too sneaky and dolls are dead.” “Who lives in that house away up there?” asked Jerry. “The Miss Wests—Rosemary and Ellen,” answered Nan. “Di and I are going to take music lessons from Miss Rosemary this summer.” Una gazed at the lucky twins with eyes whose longing was too gentle for envy. Oh, if she could only have music lessons! It was one of the dreams of her little hidden life. But nobody ever thought of such a thing. “Miss Rosemary is so sweet and she always dresses so pretty,” said Di. “Her hair is just the colour of new molasses taffy,” she added wistfully—for Di, like her mother before her, was not resigned to her own ruddy tresses. “I like Miss Ellen, too,” said Nan. “She always used to give me candies when she came to church. But Di is afraid of her.” “Her brows are so black and she has such a great deep voice,” said Di. “Oh, how scared of her Kenneth Ford used to be when he was little! Mother says the first Sunday Mrs. Ford brought him to church Miss Ellen happened to be there, sitting right behind them. And the minute Kenneth saw her he just screamed and screamed until Mrs. Ford had to carry him out.” “Who is Mrs. Ford?” asked Una wonderingly. “Oh, the Fords don’t live here. They only come here in the summer. And they’re not coming this summer. They live in that little house ‘way, ‘way down on the harbour shore where father and mother used to live. I wish you could see Persis Ford. She is just like a picture.” “I’ve heard of Mrs. Ford,” broke in Faith. “Bertie Shakespeare Drew told me about her. She was married fourteen years to a dead man and then he came to life.” “Nonsense,” said Nan. “That isn’t the way it goes at all. Bertie Shakespeare can never get anything straight. I know the whole story and I’ll tell it to you some time, but not now, for it’s too long and it’s time for us to go home. Mother doesn’t like us to be out late these damp evenings.” Nobody cared whether the manse children were out in the damp or not. Aunt Martha was already in bed and the minister was still too deeply lost in speculations concerning the immortality of the soul to remember the mortality of the body. But they went home, too, with visions of good times coming in their heads. “I think Rainbow Valley is even nicer than the graveyard,” said Una. “And I just love those dear Blythes. It’s so nice when you can love people because so often you can’t. Father said in his sermon last Sunday that we should love everybody. But how can we? How could we love Mrs. Alec Davis?” “Oh, father only said that in the pulpit,” said Faith airily. “He has more sense than to really think it outside.” The Blythe children went up to Ingleside, except Jem, who slipped away for a few moments on a solitary expedition to a remote corner of Rainbow Valley. Mayflowers grew there and Jem never forgot to take his mother a bouquet as long as they lasted. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. L. M. Montgomery (2004). Rainbow Valley. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5343/pg5343-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

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