Rainbow Valley
heavy. But the minister took them from her with quite a masterful air
and they walked away together. It was the first time Rosemary had stood
by the valley spring without thinking of Martin Crawford. The mystic
tryst had been broken.
The little by-path wound around the marsh and then struck up the long
wooded hill on the top of which Rosemary lived. Beyond, through the
trees, they could see the moonlight shining across the level summer
fields. But the little path was shadowy and narrow. Trees crowded over
it, and trees are never quite as friendly to human beings after
nightfall as they are in daylight. They wrap themselves away from us.
They whisper and plot furtively. If they reach out a hand to us it has
a hostile, tentative touch. People walking amid trees after night
always draw closer together instinctively and involuntarily, making an
alliance, physical and mental, against certain alien powers around
them. Rosemary’s dress brushed against John Meredith as they walked.
Not even an absent-minded minister, who was after all a young man
still, though he firmly believed he had outlived romance, could be
insensible to the charm of the night and the path and the companion.
It is never quite safe to think we have done with life. When we imagine
we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and
showing us yet another chapter. These two people each thought their
hearts belonged irrevocably to the past; but they both found their walk
up that hill very pleasant. Rosemary thought the Glen minister was by
no means as shy and tongue-tied as he had been represented. He seemed
to find no difficulty in talking easily and freely. Glen housewives
would have been amazed had they heard him. But then so many Glen
housewives talked only gossip and the price of eggs, and John Meredith
was not interested in either. He talked to Rosemary of books and music
and wide-world doings and something of his own history, and found that
she could understand and respond. Rosemary, it appeared, possessed a
book which Mr. Meredith had not read and wished to read. She offered to
lend it to him and when they reached the old homestead on the hill he
went in to get it.
The house itself was an old-fashioned gray one, hung with vines,
through which the light in the sitting-room winked in friendly fashion.
It looked down the Glen, over the harbour, silvered in the moonlight,
to the sand-dunes and the moaning ocean. They walked in through a
garden that always seemed to smell of roses, even when no roses were in
bloom. There was a sisterhood of lilies at the gate and a ribbon of
asters on either side of the broad walk, and a lacery of fir trees on
the hill’s edge beyond the house.
“You have the whole world at your doorstep here,” said John Meredith,
with a long breath. “What a view—what an outlook! At times I feel
stifled down there in the Glen. You can breathe up here.”
“It is calm to-night,” said Rosemary laughing. “If there were a wind it
would blow your breath away. We get ‘a’ the airts the wind can blow’ up
here. This place should be called Four Winds instead of the Harbour.”
“I like wind,” he said. “A day when there is no wind seems to me
_dead_. A windy day wakes me up.” He gave a conscious laugh. “On a calm
day I fall into day dreams. No doubt you know my reputation, Miss West.
If I cut you dead the next time we meet don’t put it down to bad
manners. Please understand that it is only abstraction and forgive
me—and speak to me.”
They found Ellen West in the sitting room when they went in. She laid
her glasses down on the book she had been reading and looked at them in
amazement tinctured with something else. But she shook hands amiably
with Mr. Meredith and he sat down and talked to her, while Rosemary
hunted out his book.
Ellen West was ten years older than Rosemary, and so different from her
that it was hard to believe they were sisters. She was dark and
massive, with black hair, thick, black eyebrows and eyes of the clear,
slaty blue of the gulf water in a north wind. She had a rather stern,
forbidding look, but she was in reality very jolly, with a hearty,
gurgling laugh and a deep, mellow, pleasant voice with a suggestion of
masculinity about it. She had once remarked to Rosemary that she would
really like to have a talk with that Presbyterian minister at the Glen,
to see if he could find a word to say to a woman when he was cornered.
She had her chance now and she tackled him on world politics. Miss
Ellen, who was a great reader, had been devouring a book on the Kaiser
of Germany, and she demanded Mr. Meredith’s opinion of him.
“A dangerous man,” was his answer.
“I believe you!” Miss Ellen nodded. “Mark my words, Mr. Meredith, that
man is going to fight somebody yet. He’s _aching_ to. He is going to
set the world on fire.”
“If you mean that he will wantonly precipitate a great war I hardly
think so,” said Mr. Meredith. “The day has gone by for that sort of
thing.”
“Bless you, it hasn’t,” rumbled Ellen. “The day never goes by for men
and nations to make asses of themselves and take to the fists. The
millenniun isn’t _that_ near, Mr. Meredith, and _you_ don’t think it is
any more than I do. As for this Kaiser, mark my words, he is going to
make a heap of trouble”—and Miss Ellen prodded her book emphatically
with her long finger. “Yes, if he isn’t nipped in the bud he’s going to
make trouble. _We’ll_ live to see it—you and I will live to see it, Mr.
Meredith. And who is going to nip him? England should, but she won’t.
_Who_ is going to nip him? Tell me that, Mr. Meredith.”
Mr. Meredith couldn’t tell her, but they plunged into a discussion of
German militarism that lasted long after Rosemary had found the book.
Rosemary said nothing, but sat in a little rocker behind Ellen and
stroked an important black cat meditatively. John Meredith hunted big
game in Europe with Ellen, but he looked oftener at Rosemary than at
Ellen, and Ellen noticed it. After Rosemary had gone to the door with
him and come back Ellen rose and looked at her accusingly.
“Rosemary West, that man has a notion of courting you.”
Rosemary quivered. Ellen’s speech was like a blow to her. It rubbed all
the bloom off the pleasant evening. But she would not let Ellen see how
it hurt her.
“Nonsense,” she said, and laughed, a little too carelessly. “You see a
beau for me in every bush, Ellen. Why he told me all about his wife
to-night—how much she was to him—how empty her death had left the
world.”
“Well, that may be _his_ way of courting,” retorted Ellen. “Men have
all kinds of ways, I understand. But don’t forget your promise,
Rosemary.”
“There is no need of my either forgetting or remembering it,” said
Rosemary, a little wearily. “_You_ forget that I’m an old maid, Ellen.
It is only your sisterly delusion that I am still young and blooming
and dangerous. Mr. Meredith merely wants to be a friend—if he wants
that much itself. He’ll forget us both long before he gets back to the
manse.”
“I’ve no objection to your being friends with him,” conceded Ellen,
“but it musn’t go beyond friendship, remember. I’m always suspicious of
widowers. They are not given to romantic ideas about friendship.
They’re apt to mean business. As for this Presbyterian man, what do
they call him shy for? He’s not a bit shy, though he may be
absent-minded—so absent-minded that he forgot to say goodnight to _me_
when you started to go to the door with him. He’s got brains, too.
There’s so few men round here that can talk sense to a body. I’ve
enjoyed the evening. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of him. But no
philandering, Rosemary, mind you—no philandering.”
Rosemary was quite used to being warned by Ellen from philandering if
she so much as talked five minutes to any marriageable man under eighty
or over eighteen. She had always laughed at the warning with unfeigned
amusement. This time it did not amuse her—it irritated her a little.
Who wanted to philander?
“Don’t be such a goose, Ellen,” she said with unaccustomed shortness as
she took her lamp. She went upstairs without saying goodnight.
Ellen shook her head dubiously and looked at the black cat.
“What is she so cross about, St. George?” she asked. “When you howl
you’re hit, I’ve always heard, George. But she promised, Saint—she
promised, and we Wests always keep our word. So it won’t matter if he
does want to philander, George. She promised. I won’t worry.”
Upstairs, in her room, Rosemary sat for a long while looking out of the
window across the moonlit garden to the distant, shining harbour. She
felt vaguely upset and unsettled. She was suddenly tired of outworn
dreams. And in the garden the petals of the last red rose were
scattered by a sudden little wind. Summer was over—it was autumn.
CHAPTER XIV.
MRS. ALEC DAVIS MAKES A CALL
John Meredith walked slowly home. At first he thought a little about
Rosemary, but by the time he reached Rainbow Valley he had forgotten
all about her and was meditating on a point regarding German theology
which Ellen had raised. He passed through Rainbow Valley and knew it
not. The charm of Rainbow Valley had no potency against German
theology. When he reached the manse he went to his study and took down
a bulky volume in order to see which had been right, he or Ellen. He
remained immersed in its mazes until dawn, struck a new trail of
speculation and pursued it like a sleuth hound for the next week,
utterly lost to the world, his parish and his family. He read day and
night; he forgot to go to his meals when Una was not there to drag him
to them; he never thought about Rosemary or Ellen again. Old Mrs.
Marshall, over-harbour, was very ill and sent for him, but the message
lay unheeded on his desk and gathered dust. Mrs. Marshall recovered but
never forgave him. A young couple came to the manse to be married and
Mr. Meredith, with unbrushed hair, in carpet slippers and faded
dressing gown, married them. To be sure, he began by reading the
funeral service to them and got along as far as “ashes to ashes and
dust to dust” before he vaguely suspected that something was wrong.
“Dear me,” he said absently, “that is strange—very strange.”
The bride, who was very nervous, began to cry. The bridegroom, who was
not in the least nervous, giggled.
“Please, sir, I think you’re burying us instead of marrying us,” he
said.
“Excuse me,” said Mr. Meredith, as it it did not matter much. He turned
up the marriage service and got through with it, but the bride never
felt quite properly married for the rest of her life.
He forgot his prayer-meeting again—but that did not matter, for it was
a wet night and nobody came. He might even have forgotten his Sunday
service if it had not been for Mrs. Alec Davis. Aunt Martha came in on
Saturday afternoon and told him that Mrs. Davis was in the parlour and
wanted to see him. Mr. Meredith sighed. Mrs. Davis was the only woman
in Glen St. Mary church whom he positively detested. Unfortunately, she
was also the richest, and his board of managers had warned Mr. Meredith
against offending her. Mr. Meredith seldom thought of such a worldly
matter as his stipend; but the managers were more practical. Also, they
were astute. Without mentioning money, they contrived to instil into
Mr. Meredith’s mind a conviction that he should not offend Mrs. Davis.
Otherwise, he would likely have forgotten all about her as soon as Aunt
Martha had gone out. As it was, he turned down his Ewald with a feeling
of annoyance and went across the hall to the parlour.
Mrs. Davis was sitting on the sofa, looking about her with an air of
scornful disapproval.
What a scandalous room! There were no curtains on the window. Mrs.
Davis did not know that Faith and Una had taken them down the day