Rainbow Valley
doesn’t love you. He wants a housekeeper and a governess. You don’t
love him. You want to be ‘Mrs.’—you are one of those weak-minded women
who think it’s a disgrace to be ranked as an old maid. That’s all there
is to it.”
Rosemary quivered. Ellen could not, or would not, understand. There was
no use arguing with her.
“So you won’t release me, Ellen?”
“No, I won’t. And I won’t talk of it again. You promised and you’ve got
to keep your word. That’s all. Go to bed. Look at the time! You’re all
romantic and worked up. To-morrow you’ll be more sensible. At any rate,
don’t let me hear any more of this nonsense. Go.”
Rosemary went without another word, pale and spiritless. Ellen walked
stormily about the room for a few minutes, then paused before the chair
where St. George had been calmly sleeping through the whole evening. A
reluctant smile overspread her dark face. There had been only one time
in her life—the time of her mother’s death—when Ellen had not been able
to temper tragedy with comedy. Even in that long ago bitterness, when
Norman Douglas had, after a fashion, jilted her, she had laughed at
herself quite as often as she had cried.
“I expect there’ll be some sulking, St. George. Yes, Saint, I expect we
are in for a few unpleasant foggy days. Well, we’ll weather them
through, George. We’ve dealt with foolish children before, Saint.
Rosemary’ll sulk a while—and then she’ll get over it—and all will be as
before, George. She promised—and she’s got to keep her promise. And
that’s the last word on the subject I’ll say to you or her or anyone,
Saint.”
But Ellen lay savagely awake till morning.
There was no sulking, however. Rosemary was pale and quiet the next
day, but beyond that Ellen could detect no difference in her.
Certainly, she seemed to bear Ellen no grudge. It was stormy, so no
mention was made of going to church. In the afternoon Rosemary shut
herself in her room and wrote a note to John Meredith. She could not
trust herself to say “no” in person. She felt quite sure that if he
suspected she was saying “no” reluctantly he would not take it for an
answer, and she could not face pleading or entreaty. She must make him
think she cared nothing at all for him and she could do that only by
letter. She wrote him the stiffest, coolest little refusal imaginable.
It was barely courteous; it certainly left no loophole of hope for the
boldest lover—and John Meredith was anything but that. He shrank into
himself, hurt and mortified, when he read Rosemary’s letter next day in
his dusty study. But under his mortification a dreadful realization
presently made itself felt. He had thought he did not love Rosemary as
deeply as he had loved Cecilia. Now, when he had lost her, he knew that
he did. She was everything to him—everything! And he must put her out
of his life completely. Even friendship was impossible now. Life
stretched before him in intolerable dreariness. He must go on—there was
his work—his children—but the heart had gone out of him. He sat alone
all that evening in his dark, cold, comfortless study with his head
bowed on his hands. Up on the hill Rosemary had a headache and went
early to bed, while Ellen remarked to St. George, purring his disdain
of foolish humankind, who did not know that a soft cushion was the only
thing that really mattered,
“What would women do if headaches had never been invented, St. George?
But never mind, Saint. We’ll just wink the other eye for a few weeks. I
admit I don’t feel comfortable myself, George. I feel as if I had
drowned a kitten. But she promised, Saint—and she was the one to offer
it, George. Bismillah!”
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE GOOD-CONDUCT CLUB
A light rain had been falling all day—a little, delicate, beautiful
spring rain, that somehow seemed to hint and whisper of mayflowers and
wakening violets. The harbour and the gulf and the low-lying shore
fields had been dim with pearl-gray mists. But now in the evening the
rain had ceased and the mists had blown out to sea. Clouds sprinkled
the sky over the harbour like little fiery roses. Beyond it the hills
were dark against a spendthrift splendour of daffodil and crimson. A
great silvery evening star was watching over the bar. A brisk, dancing,
new-sprung wind was blowing up from Rainbow Valley, resinous with the
odours of fir and damp mosses. It crooned in the old spruces around the
graveyard and ruffled Faith’s splendid curls as she sat on Hezekiah
Pollock’s tombstone with her arms round Mary Vance and Una. Carl and
Jerry were sitting opposite them on another tombstone and all were
rather full of mischief after being cooped up all day.
“The air just _shines_ to-night, doesn’t it? It’s been washed so clean,
you see,” said Faith happily.
Mary Vance eyed her gloomily. Knowing what she knew, or fancied she
knew, Mary considered that Faith was far too light-hearted. Mary had
something on her mind to say and she meant to say it before she went
home. Mrs. Elliott had sent her up to the manse with some new-laid
eggs, and had told her not to stay longer than half an hour. The half
hour was nearly up, so Mary uncurled her cramped legs from under her
and said abruptly,
“Never mind about the air. Just you listen to me. You manse young ones
have just got to behave yourselves better than you’ve been doing this
spring—that’s all there is to it. I just come up to-night a-purpose to
tell you so. The way people are talking about you is awful.”
“What have we been doing now?” cried Faith in amazement, pulling her
arm away from Mary. Una’s lips trembled and her sensitive little soul
shrank within her. Mary was always so brutally frank. Jerry began to
whistle out of bravado. He meant to let Mary see he didn’t care for
_her_ tirades. Their behaviour was no business of _hers_ anyway. What
right had _she_ to lecture them on their conduct?
“Doing now! You’re doing _all_ the time,” retorted Mary. “Just as soon
as the talk about one of your didos fades away you do something else to
start it up again. It seems to me you haven’t any idea of how manse
children ought to behave!”
“Maybe _you_ can tell us,” said Jerry, killingly sarcastic.
Sarcasm was quite thrown away on Mary.
“_I_ can tell you what will happen if you don’t learn to behave
yourselves. The session will ask your father to resign. There now,
Master Jerry-know-it-all. Mrs. Alec Davis said so to Mrs. Elliott. I
heard her. I always have my ears pricked up when Mrs. Alec Davis comes
to tea. She said you were all going from bad to worse and that though
it was only what was to be expected when you had nobody to bring you
up, still the congregation couldn’t be expected to put up with it much
longer, and something would have to be done. The Methodists just laugh
and laugh at you, and that hurts the Presbyterian feelings. _She_ says
you all need a good dose of birch tonic. Lor’, if that would make folks
good _I_ oughter be a young saint. I’m not telling you this because I
want to hurt _your_ feelings. I’m sorry for you”—Mary was past mistress
of the gentle art of condescension. “_I_ understand that you haven’t
much chance, the way things are. But other people don’t make as much
allowance as _I_ do. Miss Drew says Carl had a frog in his pocket in
Sunday School last Sunday and it hopped out while she was hearing the
lesson. She says she’s going to give up the class. Why don’t you keep
your insecks home?”
“I popped it right back in again,” said Carl. “It didn’t hurt anybody—a
poor little frog! And I wish old Jane Drew _would_ give up our class. I
hate her. Her own nephew had a dirty plug of tobacco in his pocket and
offered us fellows a chew when Elder Clow was praying. I guess that’s
worse than a frog.”
“No, ‘cause frogs are more unexpected-like. They make more of a
sensation. ‘Sides, he wasn’t caught at it. And then that praying
competition you had last week has made a fearful scandal. Everybody is
talking about it.”
“Why, the Blythes were in that as well as us,” cried Faith,
indignantly. “It was Nan Blythe who suggested it in the first place.
And Walter took the prize.”
“Well, you get the credit of it any way. It wouldn’t have been so bad
if you hadn’t had it in the graveyard.”
“I should think a graveyard was a very good place to pray in,” retorted
Jerry.
“Deacon Hazard drove past when _you_ were praying,” said Mary, “and he
saw and heard you, with your hands folded over your stomach, and
groaning after every sentence. He thought you were making fun of
_him_.”
“So I was,” declared unabashed Jerry. “Only I didn’t know he was going
by, of course. That was just a mean accident. _I_ wasn’t praying in
real earnest—I knew I had no chance of winning the prize. So I was just
getting what fun I could out of it. Walter Blythe can pray bully. Why,
he can pray as well as dad.”
“Una is the only one of US who really likes praying,” said Faith
pensively.
“Well, if praying scandalizes people so much we mustn’t do it any
more,” sighed Una.
“Shucks, you can pray all you want to, only not in the graveyard—and
don’t make a game of it. That was what made it so bad—that, and having
a tea-party on the tombstones.”
“We hadn’t.”
“Well, a soap-bubble party then. You had _something_. The over-harbour
people swear you had a tea-party, but I’m willing to take your word.
And you used this tombstone as a table.”
“Well, Martha wouldn’t let us blow bubbles in the house. She was awful
cross that day,” explained Jerry. “And this old slab made such a jolly
table.”
“Weren’t they pretty?” cried Faith, her eyes sparkling over the
remembrance. “They reflected the trees and the hills and the harbour
like little fairy worlds, and when we shook them loose they floated
away down to Rainbow Valley.”
“All but one and it went over and bust up on the Methodist spire,” said
Carl.
“I’m glad we did it once, anyhow, before we found out it was wrong,”
said Faith.
“It wouldn’t have been wrong to blow them on the lawn,” said Mary
impatiently. “Seems like I can’t knock any sense into your heads.
You’ve been told often enough you shouldn’t play in the graveyard. The
Methodists are sensitive about it.”
“We forget,” said Faith dolefully. “And the lawn is so small—and so
caterpillary—and so full of shrubs and things. We can’t be in Rainbow
Valley all the time—and where are we to go?”
“It’s the things you _do_ in the graveyard. It wouldn’t matter if you
just sat here and talked quiet, same as we’re doing now. Well, I don’t
know what is going to come of it all, but I _do_ know that Elder Warren
is going to speak to your pa about it. Deacon Hazard is his cousin.”
“I wish they wouldn’t bother father about us,” said Una.
“Well, people think he ought to bother himself about you a little more.
_I_ don’t—_I_ understand him. He’s a child in some ways himself—that’s
what he is, and needs some one to look after him as bad as you do.
Well, perhaps he’ll have some one before long, if all tales is true.”
“What do you mean?” asked Faith.
“Haven’t you got any idea—honest?” demanded Mary.
“No, no. What _do_ you mean?”
“Well, you are a lot of innocents, upon my word. Why, _every_body is
talking of it. Your pa goes to see Rosemary West. _She_ is going to be
your step-ma.”
“I don’t believe it,” cried Una, flushing crimson.
“Well, _I_ dunno. I just go by what folks say. _I_ don’t give it for a
fact. But it would be a good thing. Rosemary West’d make you toe the
mark if she came here, I’ll bet a cent, for all she’s so sweet and
smiley on the face of her. They’re always that way till they’ve caught
them. But you need some one to bring you up. You’re disgracing your pa
and I feel for him. I’ve always thought an awful lot of your pa ever
since that night he talked to me so nice. I’ve never said a single