The Blythes Are Quoted (37 page)

He had given her a blue bead and promised her that the next time he came he would bring her a West Indian shell that he had at home. He also promised that when he grew up
he would come back and marry her. She had seemed quite pleased at that.

“Mind you wait for me,” Lincoln had urged. “It’ll be an awful long time before I’m grown up. You won’t get tired waiting, will you?”

She shook her head. She was not a talkative little girl. Lincoln couldn’t remember much she had said. When ma came to the buttercup field and called him from there he had left her, stirring her pebble raisins into her big sand pie. He had looked back before a sand dune hid her from his sight and waved his hand to her.

He had never seen her since. She would be middle-aged and married now, of course. But he suddenly felt that he would like to make perfectly sure of that. And how? He did not even know her last name.

The memory of her dogged him all summer. This was curious ... he had not thought of her for years. He supposed it was Helen’s confounded mewling about marriage that had brought it all back. He did not want to marry; but he thought he would not mind very much if he could find somebody like Mrs. Dr. Blythe or ... or if he could find that little girl of the sandshore and discover she was not married.

One night, waking from a horrible dream of finding himself married to Lena and Jen and Sara all at once, with Susan Baker thrown in, he made up his mind that he would try to find out.

With a promptness very surprising in Lincoln he started off the next day, despite the fact that in a recent chat Dr. Blythe had said,

“Don’t marry till you find the right woman, Lincoln, no matter how much your female relatives nag you.”

“
You
were lucky enough to find yours in youth,” said Lincoln. “At my age it’s take what you can get.”

He got out his horse and buggy and trotted over the long miles between his place and Uncle Charlie’s with dread and a queer hope mingled in his heart. He knew that he was going on a fool’s errand but what of that? Nobody else need know of his folly. There was nothing strange in a fellow going to see his uncle.

And he remembered Mrs. Blythe say that there were times it made one happy to be a fool. It made you feel that you were driving straight back into the past.

He had actually never been to Uncle Charlie’s since that long-ago afternoon. It would be different now. His teasing cousins were married and there would be only old Uncle Charlie and Aunt Sophy. But they made him welcome. The parlour was just as ugly as ever ... Lincoln wondered how such ugliness could have lasted all these years. One would think, as Mrs. Blythe said, that God must have got tired of it long ago.

“Life can’t be all beauty, Anne-girl,” the doctor had said soberly. He had seen a good deal of pain and suffering. “But there’s a lot of beauty in the world for all that. Think of Lover’s Lane.”

“And the moon coming up over the trees in the Haunted Wood,” agreed Anne.

But the very sameness gave him a comfortable feeling of having really got back into the past. Luckily they had supper in the sunny old kitchen, where things were not “too fine,” and Lincoln found no difficulty in talking to Uncle Charlie. He even, after many false starts, contrived to ask who lived in the quaint old white house at the other side of the spruce grove.

“The Harvey Blakes,” said Uncle Charlie.

“And Janet,” quavered Aunt Sophy.

“Oh, yes, Janet,” said Uncle Charlie vaguely, as if Janet didn’t count for much.

Lincoln found his hand trembling as he set down his cup of tea. He shook his head when Aunt Sophy passed him the cake. Nothing more for him.

“So ... Janet ... is still there?” he found himself saying.

“And likely to be,” said Uncle Charlie, with the unconscious scorn men feel for all old maids.

“Janet’s a lovely girl,” protested Aunt Sophy.

“Too quiet,” said Uncle Charlie. “Far too quiet. The boys like someone with more pep. Like Mrs. Dr. Blythe now. There’s a woman for you. And I never met her till Sophy had pneumonia last winter. She did more good than the doctor, I’ll swear.”

Lincoln admired Mrs. Blythe as much as anyone, but after all the years of his mother’s ceaseless chatter, he felt that quietness in a woman was not a liability. He got up.

“I think I’ll take a walk to the shore,” he said.

He meant to go to the white house but his courage failed him. After all, what could he say? She wouldn’t remember him. He would have a look at the Cove and then go home.

He went down through the field that had been a glory of buttercups so long ago and was a pasture now, dotted over with clumps of young clover. He was not surprised to see a woman standing at the end of the sandy road, looking out over the sea. Somehow, it all fitted in ... as if it had been planned ages ago. He was quite close to her before she turned.

He thought he would have known her anywhere ... the same soft, grey-blue eyes and the same beautiful hands. She
looked at him a little wonderingly, as if she thought she was looking at no stranger but couldn’t be quite sure.

“Is the sand pie done?” said Lincoln.

It was a crazy thing to say, of course ... but wasn’t everything a little crazy today? Not quite normal anyhow. Recognition trembled into her eyes.

“Is it ... can you be ... Lincoln Burns?”

Lincoln nodded.

“So you do remember me ... and the afternoon we made sand pies here?”

Janet smiled. It made her face look strangely young and wonderful.

“Of course I remember,” she said, as if it were quite impossible she should have forgotten.

They found themselves walking along the shore. They did not talk at first. Lincoln was glad. Talk was a commonplace that did not belong to this enchanted time and place. A big moon was rising over the Cove. The wind rustled in the dune grasses and the waves washed softly on the shore.

Soon they would have to turn back. The rock shore was ahead. The big light at the mouth of Four Winds Harbour was flashing.

Lincoln felt that something must be settled before they turned but he didn’t know how on earth he was going to settle it. It would be absurd to say, “Do you think you could marry me?” to a woman he had not seen for years. But it was the only thing that came into his head and presently he said it, baldly and flatly.

“Now I’ve done it,” he thought, quaking.

Janet looked at him. In the moonlight her eyes were demure and mischievous.

“I’ve waited for you a long time,” she said. “You promised you’d come back, you know.”

Lincoln laughed. He was suddenly fearless and confident. He would not be afraid to marry Janet. She would understand why he put up that notice about the orchard and why the little fields back in the woods meant so much to him. He pulled her close to him and kissed her.

“Well, you know I’m never on time,” he said. “They call me the late Lincoln Burns. But better late than never, Janet darling.”

“I’ve got the blue bead yet,” she said, “and where is the West Indian shell you promised me?”

“At home on the parlour mantel,” said Lincoln, “waiting for you.”

Phyllis Christine opened her eyes ... very large, very dark-brown eyes that had lain all night on her creamy cheeks like silken fans ... well, if not all night at least all that was left of it after the barn dance at Glen St. Mary ... and smiled her prettiest smile at Aunty Clack, who was standing by her bed with a tray, looking just as much like a ripe, rosy apple, sound and wholesome, as she had looked in the faraway years when Christine was a little girl and “Chrissie” only to Clack.

She was Phyllis to everyone else. And how she hated it!

“Clack darling, you shouldn’t! I meant to get up. You should have called me. I really like to get up in the mornings ... the earlier the better ... though no one will ever believe me. You’d be amazed if I told you how many sunrises I’ve seen. I’d slip out, you know, and then slip back to bed again. But I don’t want or expect trays here. Dad didn’t send me here to be pampered ... he sent me here to be disciplined. You mustn’t ever do this again.”

“I dunno’s I will, lamb,” said Mrs. Claxton comfortably. “But I thought you’d be tired after that barn dance.”

Clack’s voice betrayed considerable disapproval in the intonation of the words “barn dance.” She had not thought Chrissie should go to a barn dance ... the Clarks of Ashburn had never gone to barn dances. Of course Nan and Diana Blythe would be there, though they were very young for that sort of thing. But Dr. Blythe had to curry favour with people.

The Clarks of Ashburn didn’t likely know that such things as barn dances existed ... although Clack had heard that the young people of Charlottetown had taken to attending them lately.

But Chrissie had been determined to go ... and when Chrissie was determined on a thing nobody but old Mrs. Clark could stop her ... and she not always, as Mrs. Claxton secretly reflected with concealed satisfaction.

She had not only gone but she had taken a pie with her ... to be put up at auction ... a pie she had made herself.

Chrissie could make superlative pies, though Clack hadn’t the least idea where or how she had learned to make them. Clack had never heard of “domestic courses” or the battle royal between old Mrs. Clark and Chrissie over the matter.

That pie would have to be sold at auction ... such was the custom. Goodness knew what country bumpkin would have bought it and devoured it in company with Phyllis Christine Dunbar Clark ... so named after two grandmothers, both of whom would have died of horror at the very idea of a descen-dent of theirs eating a pie with a come-by-chance partner at a barn dance.

It would not have seemed quite so bad if Kenneth Ford had been the buyer ... or Jem Blythe. But they had to take their chance like all the rest. And everyone knew that Jem Blythe and Faith Somebody-or-other were sweet on each other ... though they were far too young for anything like that yet. It seemed that mere children were in love with each other nowadays. It wasn’t so in her young days, Clack reflected with a sigh.

But old Mrs. Clark, the great-aunt of Chrissie, who had brought her up when her mother died at her birth, was still
very much alive. Brought her up, indeed! Clack had her own opinion of that.

But why in the world had she let Chrissie come down to Memory for a whole month when she had never been allowed to visit her old nurse before?

It was a puzzle indeed. Old Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Claxton had hated each other very quietly and determinedly during all the years the latter had been at Ashburn ... Mrs. Clark had hated Clack because Phyllis Christine loved her best ... didn’t love Mrs. Clark at all, no matter how many gifts were showered on her.

“Kissing goes by favour,” Clack used to think complacently under her demure exterior. She loved Chrissie as her own child and took exquisite pleasure in calling her Chrissie because she knew old Mrs. Clark hated it ... she had hated Christine Burton, one of the dead grandmothers ... and would not stoop to admit it.

But she had power and had seen to it that there was no visiting back and forth when Polly Claxton’s uncle had left her some money and a little down-country house at some out-of-the-way place named Mowbray Narrows. It had the lovely and incredible name of Memory and Polly had gone to live there, leaving the eminently correct and landscaped estate of Ashburn, situated near Charlottetown, with bitter regret over parting from her lamb mingled with satisfaction over escaping from old Mrs. Clark’s thumb. She had hoped that Chrissie would be allowed to visit her but such a hope proved to be vain ... as she told herself bitterly she ought to have known. She did not even know if the cards she sent Chrissie every birthday and Christmas ever reached her.

As a matter of fact they never did. Old Mrs. Clark saw to that.

So when Chrissie arrived suddenly and unexpectedly for a whole month’s sojourn, Aunty Clack was dying of curiosity about it all, amid her great joy.

But she asked no questions. When Chrissie got good and ready she would tell her: and if she never got ready, well and good. It was enough for Aunty Clack to have her motherless lamb with her again after five years separation to pet and cosset and carry up trays for. Not do it again! Indeed! She would please herself about that. If Adam Clark wanted disciplining done he could do it himself. He had never troubled himself much about Chrissie.

But Clack was firmly convinced that old Mrs. Clark was behind it all, though she could not imagine why. Anyhow, she might rule the roost at Ashburn ... and did she rule it! ... but she was not the mistress at Memory, thank God. She, Polly Claxton, was not going to further her plans, whatever they were. And yet, knowing old Mrs. Clark so well, she felt curious. She had such a knack of getting her way, do what you would. She could make Adam believe that black was white. There was something behind it all she could not understand.

Clack ... she would always be Aunty Clack to Chrissie, let old Mrs. Clark be as sarcastic as she might ... “Calling a servant aunty, indeed!” ... pulled up the blind and Chrissie ... she would always be Chrissie at Memory, never,
never
Phyllis ... raised herself on one round elbow and looked out on a tiny river like a gleaming blue snake winding itself around a purple hill. Right below the house was a field white as snow with daisies, and the shadow of the huge maple tree that bent over the little house fell lacily across it. Far beyond were the white crests of Four Winds Harbour and a long range of sun-washed dunes and red cliffs.

Such peace and calm and beauty didn’t seem real. And dad had sent her here ... though Chrissie knew very well that Aunty had put the idea into his head ... in order that the dullness of this drowsy, remote end of the world might reduce her to obedience. Chrissie smiled at the thought.

And when Chrissie smiled everybody in the world, except Adam Clark and Aunty, laid down their arms.

Even Clack thought that, after all, you couldn’t say a well-conducted barn dance wasn’t respectable enough and the Clarks
were
too proud and had too high a conceit of themselves. She was really thinking of old Mrs. Clark, though she would have died before she would have admitted it. Or that old Mrs. Clark would get her way somehow, whatever her motive was in sending Chrissie to Memory. For Clack knew perfectly well that it was old Mrs. Clark’s doings. She had not lived with her for years for nothing. She always got her way.