Rainbow Valley
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.
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. “They 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 bear 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 as for the trial by fist, Walter couldn’t
fight. He hated the idea. It was rough and painful—and, worst of all,
it was ugly. He never could understand Jem’s exultation in an
occasional conflict. But he wished he _could_ fight Dan Reese. He was
horribly ashamed because Faith Meredith had been insulted in his
presence and he had not tried to punish her insulter. He felt sure she
must despise him. She had not even spoken to him since Dan had called
her pig-girl. He was glad when they came to the parting of the ways.
Faith, too, was relieved, though for a different reason. She wanted to
be alone because she suddenly felt rather nervous about her errand.
Impulse had cooled, especially since Dan had bruised her self-respect.