Rainbow Valley, Lucy Maud Montgomery [short novels to read txt] 📗

Poor Walter was very far removed in spirit from the starry realms of poesy just then. He propped his elbow on his open window-sill and leaned his head drearily on his hands.

“Come on down to the shore, Walter,” cried Jem, busting in. “The boys are going to burn the sand-hill grass to-night. Father says we can go. Come on.”

At any other time Walter would have been delighted. He gloried in the burning of the sand-hill grass. But now he flatly refused to go, and no arguments or entreaties could move him. Disappointed Jem, who did not care for the long dark walk to Four Winds Point alone, retreated to his museum in the garret and buried himself in a book. He soon forgot his disappointment, revelling with the heroes of old romance, and pausing occasionally to picture himself a famous general, leading his troops to victory on some great battlefield.

Walter sat at his window until bedtime. Di crept in, hoping to be told what was wrong, but Walter could not talk of it, even to Di. Talking of it seemed to give it a reality from which he shrank. It was torture enough to think of it. The crisp, withered leaves rustled on the maple trees outside his window. The glow of rose and flame had died out of the hollow, silvery sky, and the full moon was rising gloriously over Rainbow Valley. Afar off, a ruddy woodfire was painting a page of glory on the horizon beyond the hills. It was a sharp, clear evening when far-away sounds were heard distinctly. A fox was barking across the pond; an engine was puffing down at the Glen station; a blue-jay was screaming madly in the maple grove; there was laughter over on the manse lawn. How could people laugh? How could foxes and blue-jays and engines behave as if nothing were going to happen on the morrow?

“Oh, I wish it was over,” groaned Walter.

He slept very little that night and had hard work choking down his porridge in the morning. Susan WAS rather lavish in her platefuls. Mr. Hazard found him an unsatisfactory pupil that day. Faith Meredith’s wits seemed to be wool-gathering, too. Dan Reese kept drawing surreptitious pictures of girls, with pig or rooster heads, on his slate and holding them up for all to see. The news of the coming battle had leaked out and most of the boys and many of the girls were in the spruce plantation when Dan and Walter sought it after school. Una had gone home, but Faith was there, having tied her blue ribbon around Walter’s arm. Walter was thankful that neither Jem nor Di nor Nan were among the crowd of spectators. Somehow they had not heard of what was in the wind and had gone home, too. Walter faced Dan quite undauntedly now. At the last moment all his fear had vanished, but he still felt disgust at the idea of fighting. Dan, it was noted, was really paler under his freckles than Walter was. One of the older boys gave the word and Dan struck Walter in the face.

Walter reeled a little. The pain of the blow tingled through all his sensitive frame for a moment. Then he felt pain no longer. Something, such as he had never experienced before, seemed to roll over him like a flood. His face flushed crimson, his eyes burned like flame. The scholars of Glen St. Mary school had never dreamed that “Miss Walter” could look like that. He hurled himself forward and closed with Dan like a young wildcat.

There were no particular rules in the fights of the Glen school boys. It was catch-as-catch can, and get your blows in anyhow. Walter fought with a savage fury and a joy in the struggle against which Dan could not hold his ground. It was all over very speedily. Walter had no clear consciousness of what he was doing until suddenly the red mist cleared from his sight and he found himself kneeling on the body of the prostrate Dan whose nose—oh, horror!—was spouting blood.

“Have you had enough?” demanded Walter through his clenched teeth.

Dan sulkily admitted that he had.

“My mother doesn’t write lies?”

“No.”

“Faith Meredith isn’t a pig-girl?”

“No.”

“Nor a rooster-girl?”

“No.”

“And I’m not a coward?”

“No.”

Walter had intended to ask, “And you are a liar?” but pity intervened and he did not humiliate Dan further. Besides, that blood was so horrible.

“You can go, then,” he said contemptuously.

There was a loud clapping from the boys who were perched on the rail fence, but some of the girls were crying. They were frightened. They had seen schoolboy fights before, but nothing like Walter as he had grappled with Dan. There had been something terrifying about him. They thought he would kill Dan. Now that all was over they sobbed hysterically—except Faith, who still stood tense and crimson cheeked.

Walter did not stay for any conqueror’s meed. He sprang over the fence and rushed down the spruce hill to Rainbow Valley. He felt none of the victor’s joy, but he felt a certain calm satisfaction in duty done and honour avenged—mingled with a sickish qualm when he thought of Dan’s gory nose. It had been so ugly, and Walter hated ugliness.

Also, he began to realize that he himself was somewhat sore and battered up. His lip was cut and swollen and one eye felt very strange. In Rainbow Valley he encountered Mr. Meredith, who was coming home from an afternoon call on the Miss Wests. That reverend gentleman looked gravely at him.

“It seems to me that you have been fighting, Walter?”

“Yes, sir,” said Walter, expecting a scolding.

“What was it about?”

“Dan Reese said my mother wrote lies and that that Faith was a pig-girl,” answered Walter bluntly.

“Oh—h! Then you were certainly justified, Walter.”

“Do you think it’s right to fight, sir?” asked Walter curiously.

“Not always—and not often—but sometimes—yes, sometimes,” said John Meredith. “When womenkind are insulted for instance—as in your case. My motto, Walter, is, don’t fight till you’re sure you ought to, and THEN put every ounce of you into it. In spite of sundry discolorations I infer that you came off best.”

“Yes. I made him take it all back.”

“Very good—very good, indeed. I didn’t think you were such a fighter, Walter.”

“I never fought before—and I didn’t want to right up to the last—and then,” said Walter, determined to make a clean breast of it, “I liked it while I was at it.”

The Rev. John’s eyes twinkled.

“You were—a little frightened—at first?”

“I was a whole lot frightened,” said honest Walter. “But I’m not going to be frightened any more, sir. Being frightened of things is worse than the things themselves. I’m going to ask father to take me over to Lowbridge to-morrow to get my tooth out.”

“Right again. ‘Fear is more pain than is the pain it fears.’ Do you know who wrote that, Walter? It was Shakespeare. Was there any feeling or emotion or experience of the human heart that that wonderful man did not know? When you go home tell your mother I am proud of you.”

Walter did not tell her that, however; but he told her all the rest, and she sympathized with him and told him she was glad he had stood up for her and Faith, and she anointed his sore spots and rubbed cologne on his aching head.

“Are all mothers as nice as you?” asked Walter, hugging her. “You’re WORTH standing up for.”

Miss Cornelia and Susan were in the living room when Anne came downstairs, and listened to the story with much enjoyment. Susan in particular was highly gratified.

“I am real glad to hear he has had a good fight, Mrs. Dr. dear. Perhaps it may knock that poetry nonsense out of him. And I never, no, never could bear that little viper of a Dan Reese. Will you not sit nearer to the fire, Mrs. Marshall Elliott? These November evenings are very chilly.”

“Thank you, Susan, I’m not cold. I called at the manse before I came here and got quite warm—though I had to go to the kitchen to do it, for there was no fire anywhere else. The kitchen looked as if it had been stirred up with a stick, believe ME. Mr. Meredith wasn’t home. I couldn’t find out where he was, but I have an idea that he was up at the Wests’. Do you know, Anne dearie, they say he has been going there frequently all the fall and people are beginning to think he is going to see Rosemary.”

“He would get a very charming wife if he married Rosemary,” said Anne, piling driftwood on the fire. “She is one of the most delightful girls I’ve ever known—truly one of the race of Joseph.”

“Ye—s—only she is an Episcopalian,” said Miss Cornelia doubtfully. “Of course, that is better than if she was a Methodist—but I do think Mr. Meredith could find a good enough wife in his own denomination. However, very likely there is nothing in it. It’s only a month ago that I said to him, ‘You ought to marry again, Mr. Meredith.’ He looked as shocked as if I had suggested something improper. ‘My wife is in her grave, Mrs. Elliott,’ he said, in that gentle, saintly way of his. ‘I suppose so,’ I said, ‘or I wouldn’t be advising you to marry again.’ Then he looked more shocked than ever. So I doubt if there is much in this Rosemary story. If a single minister calls twice at a house where there is a single woman all the gossips have it he is courting her.”

“It seems to me—if I may presume to say so—that Mr. Meredith is too shy to go courting a second wife,” said Susan solemnly.

“He ISN’T shy, believe ME,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “Absent-minded,—yes—but shy, no. And for all he is so abstracted and dreamy he has a very good opinion of himself, man-like, and when he is really awake he wouldn’t think it much of a chore to ask any woman to have him. No, the trouble is, he’s deluding himself into believing that his heart is buried, while all the time it’s beating away inside of him just like anybody else’s. He may have a notion of Rosemary West and he may not. If he has, we must make the best of it. She is a sweet girl and a fine housekeeper, and would make a good mother for those poor, neglected children. And,” concluded Miss Cornelia resignedly, “my own grandmother was an Episcopalian.”