Rainbow Valley
you see he had no _practice_ in whipping. So when Carl came out and
told us father felt so bad, I slipped into the study to see if I could
help him—he _likes_ me to comfort him, Miss West—and he didn’t hear me
come in and I heard what he was saying. I’ll tell you, Miss West, if
you’ll let me whisper it in your ear.”
Una whispered earnestly. Rosemary’s face turned crimson. So John
Meredith still cared. _He_ hadn’t changed his mind. And he must care
intensely if he had said that—care more than she had ever supposed he
did. She sat still for a moment, stroking Una’s hair. Then she said,
“Will you take a little letter from me to your father, Una?”
“Oh, are you going to marry him, Miss West?” asked Una eagerly.
“Perhaps—if he really wants me to,” said Rosemary, blushing again.
“I’m glad—I’m glad,” said Una bravely. Then she looked up, with
quivering lips. “Oh, Miss West, you won’t turn father against us—you
won’t make him hate us, will you?” she said beseechingly.
Rosemary stared again.
“Una Meredith! Do you think I would do such a thing? Whatever put such
an idea into your head?”
“Mary Vance said stepmothers were all like that—and that they all hated
their stepchildren and made their father hate them—she said they just
couldn’t help it—just being stepmothers made them like that”—
“You poor child! And yet you came up here and asked me to marry your
father because you wanted to make him happy? You’re a darling—a
heroine—as Ellen would say, you’re a brick. Now listen to me, very
closely, dearest. Mary Vance is a silly little girl who doesn’t know
very much and she is dreadfully mistaken about some things. I would
never dream of trying to turn your father against you. I would love you
all dearly. I don’t want to take your own mother’s place—she must
always have that in your hearts. But neither have I any intention of
being a stepmother. I want to be your friend and helper and _chum_.
Don’t you think that would be nice, Una—if you and Faith and Carl and
Jerry could just think of me as a good jolly chum—a big older sister?”
“Oh, it would be lovely,” cried Una, with a transfigured face. She
flung her arms impulsively round Rosemary’s neck. She was so happy that
she felt as if she could fly on wings.
“Do the others—do Faith and the boys have the same idea you had about
stepmothers?”
“No. Faith never believed Mary Vance. I was dreadfully foolish to
believe her, either. Faith loves you already—she has loved you ever
since poor Adam was eaten. And Jerry and Carl will think it is jolly.
Oh, Miss West, when you come to live with us, will you—could you—teach
me to cook—a little—and sew—and—and—and do things? I don’t know
anything. I won’t be much trouble—I’ll try to learn fast.”
“Darling, I’ll teach you and help you all I can. Now, you won’t say a
word to anybody about this, will you—not even to Faith, until your
father himself tells you you may? And you’ll stay and have tea with
me?”
“Oh, thank you—but—but—I think I’d rather go right back and take the
letter to father,” faltered Una. “You see, he’ll be glad that much
_sooner_, Miss West.”
“I see,” said Rosemary. She went to the house, wrote a note and gave it
to Una. When that small damsel had run off, a palpitating bundle of
happiness, Rosemary went to Ellen, who was shelling peas on the back
porch.
“Ellen,” she said, “Una Meredith has just been here to ask me to marry
her father.”
Ellen looked up and read her sister’s face.
“And you’re going to?” she said.
“It’s quite likely.”
Ellen went on shelling peas for a few minutes. Then she suddenly put
her hands up to her own face. There were tears in her black-browed
eyes.
“I—I hope we’ll all be happy,” she said between a sob and a laugh.
Down at the manse Una Meredith, warm, rosy, triumphant, marched boldly
into her father’s study and laid a letter on the desk before him. His
pale face flushed as he saw the clear, fine handwriting he knew so
well. He opened the letter. It was very short—but he shed twenty years
as he read it. Rosemary asked him if he could meet her that evening at
sunset by the spring in Rainbow Valley.
CHAPTER XXXV.
“LET THE PIPER COME”
“And so,” said Miss Cornelia, “the double wedding is to be sometime
about the middle of this month.”
There was a faint chill in the air of the early September evening, so
Anne had lighted her ever ready fire of driftwood in the big living
room, and she and Miss Cornelia basked in its fairy flicker.
“It is so delightful—especially in regard to Mr. Meredith and
Rosemary,” said Anne. “I’m as happy in the thought of it, as I was when
I was getting married myself. I felt exactly like a bride again last
evening when I was up on the hill seeing Rosemary’s trousseau.”
“They tell me her things are fine enough for a princess,” said Susan
from a shadowy corner where she was cuddling her brown boy. “I have
been invited up to see them also and I intend to go some evening. I
understand that Rosemary is to wear white silk and a veil, but Ellen is
to be married in navy blue. I have no doubt, Mrs. Dr. dear, that that
is very sensible of her, but for my own part I have always felt that if
I were ever married _I_ would prefer the white and the veil, as being
more bride-like.”
A vision of Susan in “white and a veil” presented itself before Anne’s
inner vision and was almost too much for her.
“As for Mr. Meredith,” said Miss Cornelia, “even his engagement has
made a different man of him. He isn’t half so dreamy and absent-minded,
believe me. I was so relieved when I heard that he had decided to close
the manse and let the children visit round while he was away on his
honeymoon. If he had left them and old Aunt Martha there alone for a
month I should have expected to wake every morning and see the place
burned down.”
“Aunt Martha and Jerry are coming here,” said Anne. “Carl is going to
Elder Clow’s. I haven’t heard where the girls are going.”
“Oh, I’m going to take them,” said Miss Cornelia. “Of course, I was
glad to, but Mary would have given me no peace till I asked them any
way. The Ladies’ Aid is going to clean the manse from top to bottom
before the bride and groom come back, and Norman Douglas has arranged
to fill the cellar with vegetables. Nobody ever saw or heard anything
quite like Norman Douglas these days, believe _me_. He’s so tickled
that he’s going to marry Ellen West after wanting her all his life. If
_I_ was Ellen—but then, I’m not, and if she is satisfied I can very
well be. I heard her say years ago when she was a schoolgirl that she
didn’t want a tame puppy for a husband. There’s nothing tame about
Norman, believe _me_.”
The sun was setting over Rainbow Valley. The pond was wearing a
wonderful tissue of purple and gold and green and crimson. A faint blue
haze rested on the eastern hill, over which a great, pale, round moon
was just floating up like a silver bubble.
They were all there, squatted in the little open glade—Faith and Una,
Jerry and Carl, Jem and Walter, Nan and Di, and Mary Vance. They had
been having a special celebration, for it would be Jem’s last evening
in Rainbow Valley. On the morrow he would leave for Charlottetown to
attend Queen’s Academy. Their charmed circle would be broken; and, in
spite of the jollity of their little festival, there was a hint of
sorrow in every gay young heart.
“See—there is a great golden palace over there in the sunset,” said
Walter, pointing. “Look at the shining tower—and the crimson banners
streaming from them. Perhaps a conqueror is riding home from battle—and
they are hanging them out to do honour to him.”
“Oh, I wish we had the old days back again,” exclaimed Jem. “I’d love
to be a soldier—a great, triumphant general. I’d give _everything_ to
see a big battle.”
Well, Jem was to be a soldier and see a greater battle than had ever
been fought in the world; but that was as yet far in the future; and
the mother, whose first-born son he was, was wont to look on her boys
and thank God that the “brave days of old,” which Jem longed for, were
gone for ever, and that never would it be necessary for the sons of
Canada to ride forth to battle “for the ashes of their fathers and the
temples of their gods.”
The shadow of the Great Conflict had not yet made felt any forerunner
of its chill. The lads who were to fight, and perhaps fall, on the
fields of France and Flanders, Gallipoli and Palestine, were still
roguish schoolboys with a fair life in prospect before them: the girls
whose hearts were to be wrung were yet fair little maidens a-star with
hopes and dreams.
Slowly the banners of the sunset city gave up their crimson and gold;
slowly the conqueror’s pageant faded out. Twilight crept over the
valley and the little group grew silent. Walter had been reading again
that day in his beloved book of myths and he remembered how he had once
fancied the Pied Piper coming down the valley on an evening just like
this.
He began to speak dreamily, partly because he wanted to thrill his
companions a little, partly because something apart from him seemed to
be speaking through his lips.
“The Piper is coming nearer,” he said, “he is nearer than he was that
evening I saw him before. His long, shadowy cloak is blowing around
him. He pipes—he pipes—and we must follow—Jem and Carl and Jerry and
I—round and round the world. Listen—listen—can’t you hear his wild
music?”
The girls shivered.
“You know you’re only pretending,” protested Mary Vance, “and I wish
you wouldn’t. You make it too real. I hate that old Piper of yours.”
But Jem sprang up with a gay laugh. He stood up on a little hillock,
tall and splendid, with his open brow and his fearless eyes. There were
thousands like him all over the land of the maple.
“Let the Piper come and welcome,” he cried, waving his hand. “_I’ll_
follow him gladly round and round the world.”
THE END