Rainbow Valley, Lucy Maud Montgomery [short novels to read txt] 📗
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
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“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.
CHAPTER XVI. TIT FOR TAT
With Faith, to decide was to act. She lost no time in carrying out the idea. As soon as she came home from school the next day she left the manse and made her way down the Glen. Walter Blythe joined her as she passed the post office.
“I’m going to Mrs. Elliott’s on an errand for mother,” he said. “Where are you going, Faith?”
“I am going somewhere on church business,” said Faith loftily. She did not volunteer any further information and Walter felt rather snubbed. They walked on in silence for a little while. It was a warm, windy evening with a sweet, resinous air. Beyond the sand dunes were gray seas, soft and beautiful. The Glen brook bore down a freight of gold and crimson leaves, like fairy shallops. In Mr. James Reese’s buckwheat stubble-land, with its beautiful tones of red and brown, a crow parliament was being held, whereat solemn deliberations regarding the welfare of crowland were in progress. Faith cruelly broke up the august assembly by climbing up on the fence and hurling a broken rail at it. Instantly the air was filled with flapping black wings and indignant caws.
“Why did you do that?” said Walter reproachfully. “They were having such a good time.”
“Oh, I hate crows,” said Faith airily. “The are so black and sly I feel sure they’re hypocrites. They steal little birds’ eggs out of their nests, you know. I saw one do it on our lawn last spring. Walter, what makes you so pale to-day? Did you have the toothache again last night?”
Walter shivered.
“Yes—a raging one. I couldn’t sleep a wink—so I just paced up and down the floor and imagined I was an early Christian martyr being tortured at the command of Nero. That helped ever so much for a while—and then I got so bad I couldn’t imagine anything.”
“Did you cry?” asked Faith anxiously.
“No—but I lay down on the floor and groaned,” admitted Walter. “Then the girls came in and Nan put cayenne pepper in it—and that made it worse—Di made me hold a swallow of cold water in my mouth—and I couldn’t stand it, so they called Susan. Susan said it served me right for sitting up in the cold garret yesterday writing poetry trash. But she started up the kitchen fire and got me a hot-water bottle and it stopped the toothache. As soon as I felt better I told Susan my poetry wasn’t trash and she wasn’t any judge. And she said no, thank goodness she was not and she did not know anything about poetry except that it was mostly a lot of lies. Now you know, Faith, that isn’t so. That is one reason why I like writing poetry—you can say so many things in it that are true in poetry but wouldn’t be true in prose. I told Susan so, but she said to stop my jawing and go to sleep before the water got cold, or she’d leave me to see if rhyming would cure toothache, and she hoped it would be a lesson to me.”
“Why don’t you go to the dentist at Lowbridge and get the tooth out?”
Walter shivered again.
“They want me to—but I can’t. It would hurt so.”
“Are you afraid of a little pain?” asked Faith contemptuously.
Walter flushed.
“It would be a BIG pain. I hate being hurt. Father said he wouldn’t insist on my going—he’d wait until I’d made up my own mind to go.”
“It wouldn’t hurt as long as the toothache,” argued Faith, “You’ve had five spells of toothache. If you’d just go and have it out there’d be no more bad nights. I had a tooth out once. I yelled for a moment, but it was all over then—only the bleeding.”
“The bleeding is worst of all—it’s so ugly,” cried Walter. “It just made me sick when Jem cut his foot last summer. Susan said I looked more like fainting than Jem did. But I couldn’t hear to see Jem hurt, either. Somebody is always getting hurt, Faith—and it’s awful. I just can’t BEAR to see things hurt. It makes me just want to run—and run—and run—till I can’t hear or see them.”
“There’s no use making a fuss over anyone getting hurt,” said Faith, tossing her curls. “Of course, if you’ve hurt yourself very bad, you have to yell—and blood IS messy—and I don’t like seeing other people hurt, either. But I don’t want to run—I want to go to work and help them. Your father HAS to hurt people lots of times to cure them. What would they do if HE ran away?”
“I didn’t say I WOULD run. I said I WANTED to run. That’s a different thing. I want to help people, too. But oh, I wish there weren’t any ugly, dreadful things in the world. I wish everything was glad and beautiful.”
“Well, don’t let’s think of what isn’t,” said Faith. “After all, there’s lots of fun in being alive. You wouldn’t have toothache if you were dead, but still, wouldn’t you lots rather be alive than dead? I would, a hundred times. Oh, here’s Dan Reese. He’s been down to the harbour for fish.”
“I hate Dan Reese,” said Walter.
“So do I. All us girls do. I’m just going to walk past and never take the least notice of him. You watch me!”
Faith accordingly stalked past Dan with her chin out and an expression of scorn that bit into his soul. He turned and shouted after her.
“Pig-girl! Pig-girl!! Pig-girl!!!” in a crescendo of insult.
Faith walked on, seemingly oblivious. But her lip trembled slightly with a sense of outrage. She knew she was no match for Dan Reese when it came to an exchange of epithets. She wished Jem Blythe had been with her instead of Walter. If Dan Reese had dared to call her a pig-girl in Jem’s hearing, Jem would have wiped up the dust with him. But it never occurred to Faith to expect Walter to do it, or blame him for not doing it. Walter, she knew, never fought other boys. Neither did Charlie Clow of the north road. The strange part was that, while she despised Charlie for a coward, it never occurred to her to disdain Walter. It was simply that he seemed to her an inhabitant of a world of his own, where different traditions prevailed. Faith would as soon have expected a starry-eyed young angel to pummel dirty, freckled Dan Reese for her as Walter Blythe. She would not have blamed the angel and she did not blame Walter Blythe. But she wished that sturdy Jem or Jerry had been there and Dan’s insult continued to rankle in her soul.
Walter was pale no longer. He had flushed crimson and his beautiful eyes were clouded with shame and anger. He knew that he ought to have avenged Faith. Jem would have sailed right in and made Dan eat his words with bitter sauce. Ritchie Warren would have overwhelmed Dan with worse “names” than Dan had called Faith. But Walter could not—simply could not—“call names.” He knew he would get the worst of it. He could never conceive or utter the vulgar, ribald insults of which Dan Reese had unlimited command. And
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